T"*^  3 


OCIAL.     I  JtACniNCr 


Qiarles  M/.  3tubb3 


The  Social  Teaching  of  the 
Lord's  Prayer 


The  Social  Teaching 


of  the 


Lord's  Prayer 


Four  Sermons 
Preached  before  the  University  of  Oxford 


By 

Charles  WilHam  Stubbs,  D.D. 

Dean  of  Ely 


New  York 
Thomas   Whittaker 

2  and  3,  Bible  House 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dedicatory  Letter     .             .             .  .     vii 

I.     Social  Order         ....  1 

II.     Social  Progress          .             .             .  .28 

in.     Social  Justice      ....  54 

IV.     Social  Duty   .             .             .             .  .80 


DEDICATORY   LETTER 


TO  THE  REV.  IV.  R.  HUNTINGDON,  D.D., 

Redor  of  Grace  Church,  New  Yorl\ 

My  dear  Dr.  Huntingdon, 

When  I  was  your  guest  in  New  York  last 
autumn,  I  preached,  on  your  invitation,  at 
Grace  Church,  a  sermon  on  ^'  The  Social 
Teaching  of  the  Lord's  Prayer."  This  sermon 
I  subsequently  repeated  in  the  chapel  of  the 
Episcopal  Theological  School,  Cambridge,  in 
Trinity  Church,  Philadelphia,  and  Trinity 
Church,  Boston — in  both  of  which  churches  I 
was  glad  to  remember  that  I  was  occupying 
the  old  pulpit  of  the  late  Bishop  Phillips 
Brooks — in  Trinity  Church,  Columbus,  Ohio, 
before  the  Convention  of  the  St.  Andrew's 
Brotherhood,  in  Christ  Church,  Meadville, 
Pennsylvania,  and  in  Grace  Church,  Chicago. 
In   response   to    a    kindly-expressed    wish    by 


Vni  DEDICATORY    LETTER 

many  of  my  American  friends  in  these  various 
places,  I  now  venture  to  publish  four  sermons 
on  the  same  subject,  preached  during  my  term 
of  office  as  Select  Preacher  before  the  Univer- 
sity of  Oxford.  If,  in  its  amended  form,  the 
thought  which  met  with  your  sympathy  as 
expressed  in  the  shorter  sermon,  should  seem 
to  you  attenuated  rather  than  enriched  by 
expansion,  you  will,  I  am  sure,  jDut  that  down 
to  the  inadequacy  of  my  method,  certainly  not 
to  any  limitation  of  my  subject. 

For  in  America,  no  less  than  in  Enofland, 
the  Churchmen  of  our  generation  are  awaken- 
ing to  the  largeness  of  the  mission  which  is 
open  to  the  Church  by  her  recognition  of  the 
fact,  that  the  message  of  the  Incarnation  of 
Jesus  Christ  is  social  no  less  than  personal ; 
that  Christ,  as  the  supreme  Personality  of  all 
history,  is  the  most  potent  factor  of  civiliza- 
tion ;  that  the  basis  of  all  true  Social  Order, 
Social  Progress,  Social  Justice,  Social  Duty,  is 
to  be  found  in  the  infinite  creative  good,  the 
holy  redeeming  energy  of  the  Fatherly  Will 
of  God,  revealed  in  the  Laws  of  the  king-dom 
of  Heaven,  and  setting  like  a  tide  into  the 
currents  of  history. 

In  my  shorter  sermon  I  spoke  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer   as  the    Paternoster    of   the   Christian 


DEDICATORY    LETTER  IX 

Socialist.  Such  a  phrase  did  not,  I  hope, 
seem  to  you  an  unnatural  one.  You  would 
understand  that  I  used  the  phrase  in  the 
sense  in  which  our  common  master  in  theo- 
logy, Frederick  Maurice,  would  have  used 
it  fifty  years  ago.  And  certainly  we  must 
all  recognize  that  the  personal  cry  of  the 
humble  and  contrite  heart,  "  God,  be  merci- 
ful to  me  a  sinner,"  is  individualistic  in  a 
sense  which  can  never  be  true  of  the  "  Our 
Father."  A  Kyrie  must  almost  always,  by 
the  necessity  of  things,  remain  something 
of  an  Individualist's  prayer.  A  Paternoster 
belongs  to  a  Socialist.  For  the  very  first 
word  of  that  prayer,  as  it  has  often  been 
pointed  out,  is  a  plea  for  universal  brother- 
hood and  social  union,  reminding  us  that 
when  we  pray  for  ourselves,  we  are  praying 
also  for  our  human  brothers ;  that  we  cannot 
speak  to  God  for  ourselves  witliout  also  speak- 
ing for  them ;  that  unless  we  carry  their  sins 
to  the  throne  of  God's  grace,  we  do  not  carry 
our  own.  And  the  second  word  of  that  prayer 
is  an  appeal  to  the  universal  fact,  not  only  of 
our  creation  by  the  Heavenly  Father,  but  of 
our  re-creation  in  the  Incarnate  Christ,  re- 
minding us  that  God  hath  "  sent  forth  His 
Son,  made  of  a  woman,  made  under  the  Law, 


X  DEDICATORY    LETTER 

tliat  we  might  receive  the  adoption  of  sons," 
that  we  might  never  forget  that  the  name  of 
our  God  would  lose  all  its  meaning  for  us  if 
we  tried  to  use  it  merely  as  individuals,  and 
not  as  members  of  a  society,  of  a  common 
family.  It  is,  you  will  see,  in  this  sense  that, 
in  the  following  sermons,  I  have  interpreted 
the  Lord's  Prayer,  the  Prayer  of  Christ,  as  a 
Socialist,  not  an  Individualist,  Paternoster. 

And  yet  you  will  also  see,  that  if  for  the 
moment  I  think  it  is  the  Socialistic  aspect  of 
Christ's  message  that  most  needs  to  be  empha- 
sized, I  am  not  proposing  to  depreciate  the 
Individualistic  aspect.  Individualism  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  Christianity.  But  Individual- 
ism, to  be  truly  ethical,  must  put  itself  wholly 
into  social  relationship.  "  Only  a  perfect  in- 
dividual," it  has  been  well  said  by  our  friend 
Professor  Nash  of  Cambridge,  ''  perfectly 
knowing  and  mastering  himself,  can  be  truly 
in  society ;  and  only  in  society  can  a  man 
become  a  perfect  individual."  To  the  com- 
pleteness of  Christ's  gospel  both  aspects  of 
His  doctrine  are  necessary.  Personal  Salvation 
by  Christ  is  true.  But  it  is  not  the  whole 
truth,  nor  the  only  truth.  Social  Redemption 
by  Christ  is  true  also.  Protestant  Individual- 
ism is  true.     But  it  is  not  the  whole  truth  nor 


DEDICATORY    LETTEK  XI 

the  only  truth.  Catholic  Socialism  is  true  also. 
In  God's  plan  for  the  world  the  perfection  of 
the  individual  and  the  perfection  of  the  society 
are  both  part  of  His  design.  There  is  a  Chris- 
tian ideal  for  society.  There  is  a  Christian 
philosophy  of  civilization.  History  has  a 
moral  goal. 

And  in  the  development  of  that  divine  plan 
each  age  of  the  world,  each  race  of  men,  would 
seem  to  have  its  own  special  work  to  do — a 
fresh  term,  so  to  speak,  to  disengage  from  the 
unknown  quantities  of  the  social  equation. 

That  both  your  Church  and  mine,  the  Pro- 
testant Episcopal  Church  of  America,  the 
National  Church  of  England,  may  realize  the 
grave  responsibilities  of  that  Social  Mission, 
which  it  would  appear  to  be  the  special  office 
of  our  English  Christianity  at  the  present  time 
to  accomplish,  is,  I  know,  as  sincerely  your 
prayer  as  it  is  mine.  That  I  was  enabled  last 
autumn  to  speak  of  this  Mission  in  so  many 
American  pulpits,  and  to  pass  on  to  American 
Churchmen  some,  I  trust,  of  the  lessons  which 
I  had  learnt  in  the  Cambridge  class-rooms  of 
Maurice  and  Kingsley,  of  Lightfoot  and  West- 
cott  and  Hort,  will  always  remain  one  of  the 
great  privileges  of  my  life. 

In  venturing  now  to  dedicate  to  you  these 


Xll  DEDICATORY    LETTER     . 

sermons  on  the  same  subject,  preached  before 
the  University  of  Oxford,  I  am  not  only 
desirous  of  offering  them  as  a  memento  of  my 
very  grateful  friendship,  but  also  as  a  testi- 
mony to  my  reverent  admiration  for  one  to 
whom  a  love  of  true  scholarship  and  sound 
learning,  of  wise  judgment  and  vigorous  ad- 
ministration, has  led  his  fellow-churchmen  in 
America  to  look  for  inspiration  and  leadership. 
Believe  me, 

My  dear  Dr.  Huntingdon, 

Very  sincerely  yours, 
Charles  W.  Stubbs. 

Deanery,  Ehj, 

Whitsuntide,  1000. 


THE  SOCIAL  TEACHING  OF  THE 
LORD'S  PRAYER 


SOCIAL   ORDER 

Sfc.  Matt.  vi.  9,  10  :  "Our  Father  which  art 
in  Heaven  .  .  .  Thy  will  be  done  in  earth." 

What  is  the  basic  conception  of  a  sound 
Sociology  1 

In  what  apjDcars  to  be  God's  plan  for 
humanity,  does  the  organism  of  human  society 
belong  by  its  essence  to  an  invisible  world  ? 
Is  there  any  spiritual  relationship  to  which  for 
men,  as  social  beings,  the  universal  bonds  and 
duties  of  humanity  may  be  traced  ? 

Looking  back  upon  history,  may  wc  con- 
sider that  the  social  evolution  of  which  science 
claims  to  trace  the  method  and  purpose 
exhibits  also  the  working  out  of  a  spiritual 
purpose  and  discipline  for  man  ? 

In  that  history  is  there  any  warrant  for  a 


2       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

belief  in  an  Ideal  social  state,  conjectured  as 
being  perfected  in  the  future,  natural — and  to 
be  naturally  evolved  ? — and  if  so,  of  what  sort 
is  that  Ideal  ? 

These  are  questions  which  in  an  age  like 
our  own,  of  scientific  exploration  on  the  one 
hand  and  of  socialistic  agitation  on  the  other, 
seem  to  demand  an  answer  from  any  Christian 
investigator  of  social  philosophy,  social  morality, 
from  any  thoughtful  citizen,  that  is  to  say, 
who  believes  that  Christianity  is  the  religion 
of  the  Eternal  Word,  ''  through  whom  all  the 
ages  were  made,"  and  contains  therefore  the 
key  to  all  the  social  problems  which  any  one 
of  those  ages  may  propound. 

I  think  that  the  answer  to  those  questions 
may,  in  part,  be  found  in  the  Lord's  Prayer. 
At  any  rate  I  am  proposing  in  the  four  sermons 
which  it  will  be  my  duty  to  deliver  in  this 
place  from  time  to  time,  to  ask  you  to  con- 
sider with  me  some  of  the  elementary  prin- 
ciples of  human  society  which  seem  to  me  to  be 
either  implied  or  suggested  by  each  of  the  five 
familiar  clauses  of  the  Paternoster. 

This  prayer,  in  its  comprehensiveness,  in  its 
simplicity,  has  been  for  nearly  nineteen  cen- 
turies the  Catholic  prayer  of  Christendom.  It 
has    been    translated    into    all    languages.     It 


SOCIAL    OEDER  3 

has  been  accepted  by  all  Churches.     In  every 
age  and   in    every  society   of   Christians,  the 
faithful  follower  of  Jesus  has  taken  this  prayer 
upon  his  lips,  and  has  ever  found  it  to  respond 
to  his  latest  thought.     It  was  enshrined  at  the 
very  heart  of  the  great  Eucharistic  sacrifice  in 
all  the  ancient  Liturgies  of  the  Church.     It  is 
so  placed   in  our   own  office    of   Holy   Com- 
munion  to-day.     In   the  daily   order,  too,  of 
Common  Prayer  it  follows  immediately  upon 
the  public  absolution  of  the  penitent  people. 
It  has  equally  been  at  the  heart  of  the  private 
devotion  of  the  individual  Christian  all  through 
the  ages.    It  is  the  protoplasm  of  all  Christian 
worship.      It   is  simple   enough  for  the   little 
child.     It    is    deep    enough    for    the    wisest 
theologian.      For    to    both    alike    the    "  Our 
Father "  opens  and  expands  in  meaning  with 
the  growth  of  human  needs.     In  our  age,  with 
its  new  and  developing  social  conditions,  we 
shall,  no  doubt,  outgrow    many  things.     AVe 
shall  not,  I  think,  outgrow  the  Lord's  Prayer. 
In  the  early  part  of  the  fourteenth  century 
there    was    existing    in    the    city    of   York    a 
religious  guild,  known  by  the  name  of  ''  the 
Guild  of  the  Lord's  Prayer."     In  older  days  it 
seemed  that  there  had  been  a  custom  to  enact 
in  the  streets  of  the  city  a  play  setting  forth 


4       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORDS    PRAYER 

the  goodness  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  ;  "in  which 
Play  " — I  quote  from  the  okl  Guikl  ordinance 
— "  all  manner  of  vices  and  sins  were  held  up 
to  scorn,  and  the  virtues  were  held  up  to 
praise.  .  .  '  Would  that  this  Play,'  the 
people  said,  '  could  be  kept  up  in  this  city  for 
the  health  of  souls  and  for  the  comfort  of  the 
citizens  and  neighbours  ! '  And  so  the  Guild 
was  formed  of  '  bretheren  and  sisteren  of  good 
and  worthy  businesses  to  keep  up  this  Play  to 
the  glory  of  God,  the  maker  of  the  sakl  Prayer.' 
And  a  table  was  set  up  at  the  Guild  expense, 
and  hung  against  a  pillar  of  the  Cathedral 
Church,  showing  the  whole  meaning  and  use 
of  the  Lord's  Prayer :  and  whenever  the  Play 
was  played  the  Guild  members  rode  with  the 
players  through  the  streets,  and  once  in  every 
six  weeks  the  bretheren  and  sisteren  met  to- 
gether to  offer  special  prayers  'for  the  good 
governance  of  the  kingdom  of  England.' " 

Times  and  customs  have  changed  greatly  in 
England  since  those  old  days.  I  at  least  have 
no  desire  to  restore  them.  But  there  is  some- 
thino-  in  those  old  times  which  it  is  worth 
while  to  restore.  I  mean  that  spirit  of  social 
devotion  and  worship  which,  under  whatever 
even  superstitious  form  of  ritual,  or  quaint 
aspect  of  drama,  did  enable  the  Englishman 


SOCIAL    ORDER 


of  those  days  to  realize  intensely  his  religion 
in  its  bearing,  not  only  on  his  own  individual 
soul,  but  also  on  wider  human  society,  did 
make  him  associate  the  teaching  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  not  only  with  his  private  devotions  or 
the  highest  acts  of  Christian  worship,  but  also 
with  the  daily  bonds  and  obligations  of  his 
social  and  civic  life,  his  conduct  of  good  and 
worthy  business,  the  health  and  comfort  of 
citizens  and  neighbours,  the  good  governance 
of  the  kingdom  of  England. 

That  spirit  is  as  much  needed  as  ever  it  was 
for  the  wholesome  discipline  of  the  body  politic. 
It  is  in  that  spirit,  at  any  rate,  that  I  would 
wish  you  to  consider  some  of  the  social  lessons 
which  it  seems  to  me  we  may  profitably  learn 
from  a  study  of  the  Lord's  Prayer. 

Our  subject  naturally  divides  itself  into  five 
divisions  corresponding  with  the  five  chief 
clauses  of  the  prayer.  We  may  set  it  out,  I 
think,  conveniently  in  this  form. 

L  Social  Order : — its  basis  in  the  Fatherly 
will  of  God.  ''Father  .  .  .  Thy  will 
be  done  in  earth."  Evolution  the  way 
God  makes  things  come  to  pass. 

n.  Social  Procuress : — its  warrant  in  the 
sublime  optimism  of  the  Incarnate 
Son.     ''Thy    kingdom    come  .  ..  .  in 


6       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYEIt 

earth."     The  royal  law  of  neighbour- 
liness. 
TIL  Social    Justice  : — its    clifFerentiation    of 
life  from  livelihood.      "  Give  us  this 
clay  our  daily  bread."     God's  bread, 
not  devil's  bread. 
IV.  Social  Duty  : — the  identification  of  duty 
with  debt  to  neighbour  and  to  God. 
"  Foro:ive  us  our  debts."     Foro:ive  us 
our  failures  in  social  duty. 
Y.   Social      Discipline : — the      pressure     of 
heredity   and    environment,   and    the 
ministry  of  the  free  and  Holy  Spirit 
of  God.    "  Lead  us  not  into  temptation, 
but  deliver  us  from  evil."     A  revolu- 
tion   of    thought     must    precede    a 
reformation  of  society. 


Social  Order. 

Our  subject,  then,  to-day  is  the  basis  of 
Social  Order. 

"  Our  Father  which  art  in  Heaven  .  .  . 
Thy  will  be  done  in  earth." 

It  is  possible,  no  doubt,  to  contend — it  has 
indeed  not  seldom  been  contended — that  there 
is  in  these  words  no  specially  Christian  revela- 


SOCIAL    ORDER  7 

tion  of  the  basis  of  the  social  organism,  or 
indeed  of  any  fundamental  idea  of  Christianity, 
because  in  this  clause  of  the  Lord's  Prayer 
Jesus  was  simply  adapting  to  His  own  purpose 
a  doctrine  already  in  common  use  in  the 
Talmudic  and  Rabbinical  literature  of  His 
age,  and  one  which  rested  of  course  ultimately 
on  the  Old  Testament  scripture  itself.  The 
fact  is  undeniable.  The  writing's  of  the  Jewish 
fathers  do  contain  many  expressions,  almost 
verbatim,  which  are  used  by  Jesus  in  the 
Prayer  and  in  the  fuller  teaching  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount.  Those  of  you  who  care  to  do 
so  will  find  the  parallelisms  drawn  out  with 
much  careful  scholarship  in  an  excursus  on 
the  subject  appended  to  Dr.  Charles  Taylor's 
Sayings  of  the  Jeivish  Fathers.  But  indeed 
we  may  go  further,  and  say  that  there  is  not 
anything  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  which  might 
not  have  been  the  prayer  of  any  pious  Jew  of 
Christ's  time.  But  what  of  that  ?  A  truth 
revealed  by  God  can  never  be  a  truth  out  of 
relation  with  previous  thought !  The  origin- 
ality of  Jesus  is  not  surely  to  be  measured 
only  by  the  critical  canon  of  one  particular 
ap^e.  That  would  be  to  blind  ourselves  to  all 
that  is  involved  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarna- 
tion.    Indeed,  it  is  only  as  we  realize  Christ, 


8   SOCIAL  TEACHING  OF  THE  LORDS  PRAYER 

not  only  in  connection  with  the  gospel  revela- 
tion, but  as  the  pre-incarnate  Son  of  God,  the 
same  Divine  Word,  who  is  and  was  and  ever 
has  been  the  lio;ht  and  the  life  of  men,  who 
before  what  we  call  Christianity  wrought  first 
in  mankind  at  large  through  the  avenues  of 
conscience,  and  afterwards  more  particularly 
in  the  Jews  through  a  special  though  still 
imperfect  revelation,  that  we  shall  find  the 
difficulties  to  fall  away  which  beset  the  lan- 
guage not  only  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 
or  the  Lord's  Prayer,  but  much  else  in  the  New 
Testament  writings.  We  must  predicate  of 
the  Word  not  only  prior  but  absolute  existence. 
Let  us  make  this  then  our  starting-point,  and 
read  boldly  into  the  language  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  and  especially  into  its  opening  clause, 
that  Idea  of  God,  that  conception  of  the 
Personality  of  Christ,  which  is  implied  in  the 
Doctrine  of  the  Licarnation. 

For  my  purpose  to-day  I  may  venture  to 
state  that  doctrine  broadly  thus  : — The  Chris- 
tian creed  announces  to  us  in  the  first  place, 
not  a  world-wide  philosophy,  nor  even  a 
universal  religion,  but  it  introduces  us  to  a 
Supreme  Person — Jesus  Christ  our  Lord.  In 
heaven  as  on  earth,  over  things  invisible 
as  over  thinsfs  visil^le,  over  thiiws  immaterial 


SOCIAL    ORDER  9 

as  over  things  material,  this  Person  is  repre- 
sented as  supreme. 

In  the  natural  creation,  in  the  material 
universe,  His  supremacy  is  that  of  the  Eternal 
Eeason,  the  pre-incarnate  Word  of  God,  the 
Logos  of  Greek  thought,  by  whose  agency  the 
world  of  matter  was  created,  and  is  sustained, 
who  is  at  once  the  beginning  and  the  end  of 
material  things.  "All  things  have  been  created 
through  Him  and  unto  Him." 

And  in  the  spiritual  creation,  in  the  Church, 
this  same  Person  is  represented  as  the  inspirer 
and  the  illuminator  of  man  in  his  intellectual 
being,  the  light  and  the  life  of  humanity,  the 
revealer  to  man  of  the  Divine  character, 
"manifesting  God  with  increasing  clearness  at 
each  successive  stage  in  the  great  scale  of 
being,"  until  in  the  fullness  of  time  He  Him- 
self "for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation  came 
down  from  heaven,  and — was  incarnate— rwas 
made  man."  And  from  this  conception  of 
the  personality  of  Christ,  His  mediatorial  func- 
tion in  the  Church  flowing  from  His  media- 
torial functions  in  the  world,  there  follows  not 
only  the  redemption,  but  the  exaltation  of 
human  nature,  the  consecration  of  all  human 
relations  with  the  visible  creation,  and  in  con- 
nection  with  the  conquest   of  sin  and  death, 


10       SOCIAL    TEACHINC4    OF    THE    LORD's    PEAYER 

there  opens  up  the  vista  of  the  glorious  destiny 
of  the  children  of  God,  proposed  before  the 
world  was. 

Now  this  doctrine  of  the  pre-incarnate  Word 
and  the  Incarnate  Christ,  though  it  un- 
doubtedly stands  in  the  forefront  of  the  pro- 
logue to  St.  John's  Gospel,  though  it  is  hardly 
less  prominent  in  the  opening  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  and  though  it  finds  special 
emphasis  in  the  two  great  Christological  pas- 
sages in  the  Epistles  to  the  Ephesians  and 
Colossians,  and  though  lastly  it  forms  the 
groundwork  of  the  great  Creed  which  is  com- 
mon to  all  the  Churches,  in  reality  exercised 
very  little  influence  over  the  direction  of 
theological  thought  in  the  early  part  of  this 
century. 

The  loss  has  been  most  serious.  It  must 
be  more  than  twenty  years  now  since  Bishop 
Lightfoot,  in  his  Introduction  to  his  Com- 
mentary on  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians, 
said  :  "  How  much  our  theological  conceptions 
suff*er  in  breadth  and  fullness  by  this  neglect  a 
moment's  reflection  will  show.  How  much 
more  hearty  would  be  the  sympathy  of  theo- 
loorians  with  the  revelations  of  science  and 
the  developments  of  history  if  they  habitually 
connected   them    with   the    operation   of  the 


SOCIAL    ORDER  11 

same  Divine  Word  who  is  the  centre  of  all 
their  religious  aspirations  it  is  needless  to  say. 
Through  the  recognition  of  this  idea  with  all 
the  consequences  which  flow  from  it  as  a 
living  influence,  more  than  in  any  other  way, 
may  we  hope  to  strike  the  chords  of  that 
'  vaster  music '  which  results  only  from  the 
harmony  of  knowledge  and  faith,  of  reverence 
and  research." 

That  hope  of  Dr.  Lightfoot  has  during  the 
last  decade  of  the  century  been  largely  ful- 
filled. It  must  be  obvious  to  any  one  who 
is  in  the  habit  of  listening  to  any  of  the  more 
thoughtful  preachers  of  our  day,  that  the 
Doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  finds  a  place  and 
a  prominence  in  their  pulpit-teaching  which 
was  quite  unusual  thirty  or  even  twenty  years 
ago. 

It  is  not  quite  pertinent  to  my  present  pur- 
pose to  trace  the  history  of  that  readjustment 
of  doctrine,  that  "re-focussing  of  truth"  in  the 
scheme  of  Anglican  Theology.  You  may  read 
the  chapters  of  its  modern  history  in  such 
books  as  Professor  Fiske's  Cosmic  Philosophy, 
Idea  of  God,  and  Destiny  of  Man,  in  Dr. 
Allen's  Continuity  of  Christian  Thought,  in  Dr. 
Bigg's  Bamj^toyi  Lectures  on  the  "  Christian 
Platonists,"  in  Dr.  Heard's  Hidsean  Lectures 


12       SOCIAL    TEACHING  OF    THE    LORDS    PRAYER 

on  "  Alexandrian  and  Carthaginian  Theology," 
and  more  readily  in  Mr.  Aubrey  Moore's  and 
Mr.  Illingworth's  brilliant  essays  in  Lux 
Mtindi. 

But  it  is  pertinent,  I  think,  to  my  present 
purpose,  and  certainly  historically  just,  to  note 
that  this  readjustment  of  doctrine,  which  has 
so  intimately  affected  the  later  character  of 
the  Anglican  Revival,  had  taken  place  com- 
pletely in  the  teaching  of  one  great  Christian 
doctor — perhaps  the  greatest — of  this  cen- 
tury more  than  sixty  years  ago.  I  mean  in 
the  writino^s  of  Frederick  Denison  Maurice. 

You  will  pardon  a  Cambridge  man,  I  hope, 
when  he  says  that  "  the  Oxford  Movement " 
is  hardly  the  full  equivalent  of  the  "Anglican 
Revival " ;  and  further  forgive  the  partiality  of 
an  old  pupil  of  Frederick  Maurice,  if  he  says 
that  it  has  sometimes  seemed  to  some  of  us 
that  here  in  Oxford  your  younger  generation' 
of  theologians,  who  *'  regard  themselves  as 
adjusting  the  High  Church  theology  of  Dr. 
Pusey  and  his  generation  to  the  newer  know 
ledge  of  our  day,"  do  not,  at  least  publicly, 
sufficiently  recognize  the  debt  which  they  owe 
to  Maurice  for  the  lead  which  he  gave  more 
than  sixty  years  ago. 

Indeed,   there   are  those  who  think  that  it 


SOCIAL    ORDER  13 

would  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  it  was  the 
doctrine  of  Maurice  rather  than  that  of  Pusey 
or  Newman,  which  for  forty  years — Maurice 
began  his  work  in  1835,  he  died  in  1872 — 
*'  kept  the  whole  forward  movement  in  the 
social  and  political  life  of  the  English  people  in 
union  with  God,  and  identified  with  religion," 
a  doctrine  moreover  which,  idealized  and 
transfigured  by  two  great  poets  of  the  century, 
Tennyson  and  Browning,  dominant  in  the 
teachinor  of  the  Cambridoe  schools  of  Liohtfoot 

o  o  o 

and  Westcott  and  Hort,  assimilated  as  it  would 
seem  almost  unconsciously  by  the  younger 
Oxford  theologians  of  the  Lux  Mundi  school, 
has  during  this  last  decade  of  the  century  turned 
so  wisely  the  current  of  our  English  Christian- 
ity to  the  consideration  of  the  great  social 
problems  of  the  age,  and  is  at  this  moment 
so  profoundly  afiecting,  moulding,  inspiring, 
transfiguring  the  social  ideals  of  the  present. 

I  do  not  mean,  of  course,  to  assert  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  in  its  modern  re- 
statement originated  with  Maurice.  He  himself 
freely  confessed  his  obligations  to  Coleridge, 
to  Erskine  of  Linlathen,  to  Alexander  Knox. 
And  the  history  of  the  heredity,  so  to  say,  of 
the  doctrine  may  easily  be  traced  backwards 
through  the  Cambridge  Platonists  of  the  seven- 


14       SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF   THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

teenth  century — Cudwortli,  Smith,  AVhichcote 
— through  the  Oxford  reformers  of  the  fifteenth 
century — Colet,  Erasmus,  and  More — back  to 
the  great  Grreek  Christian  Fathers  of  the 
early  Church — Clement,  Origen,  Hippolytus. 
The  doctrine  was  not,  of  course,  new  ;  but 
Maurice  was  the  writer  who  first  in  our 
century  set  it  forth  in  the  new  form  which 
the  new  age  needed. 

Compare,  for  example,  Mr.  Illingworth's 
masterly  essay  in  Lux  Muiidi  on  '^  The  Incar- 
nation and  Development,"  especially  the  pas- 
sage towards  the  close  of  that  essay  beginning 
with  the  words — "  The  Incarnation  opened 
Heaven,  for  it  was  the  revelation  of  the  Word  ; 
but  it  also  reconsecrated  earth,  for  the  Word 
was  made  Flesh  and  dwelt  among  us" — with 
the  chapter  in  Maurice's  Moral  and  Meta- 
2)hysical  Philosoj^hy  on  ''  Philo  and  the  Alex- 
andrian School,"  or  with  the  later  chapters  on 
the  Neo-Platonists,  and  you  will  see  how  clearly 
sixty  years  ago  Maurice  had  grasped  the  truth 
of  the  creative  and  administrative  and  redemp- 
tive work  of  the  pre-incarnatc  Word  and  the 
incarnate  Christ,  which  our  age  needed,  to 
give  unity  and  breadth  and  fullness  to  its 
theological  conceptions,  and  also  no  less  to 
connect  for  the  Christian  evolutionist  ])oth  the 


SOCIAL    ORDER  15 

revelations  of  science  and  the  developments  of 
history — the  study  of  which  has  influenced 
so  deeply  the  later  phases  of  the  Anglican 
Revival — with  the  operations  of  the  same 
Divine  Personality. 

And  whatever  may  be  the  fact  with  regard 
to  pure  theology,  certainly  in  regard  to  what 
we  may  call  applied  theology,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  it  is  to  Maurice's  teaching  that 
we  must  look  back  chiefly  for  the  filiation 
of  those  ideas,  commonly  called  Christian 
Socialist,  wdiich  have  hitherto  so  happily  for 
England  succeeded  in  turning  democratic  as- 
pirations and  hopes,  both  political  and  social, 
from  revolutionary  courses  into  channels  and 
methods  which  have  led  on  the  whole  to  stable 
and  conservative,  and  therefore  permanent 
progress. 

For  no  one  who  knows  anything  of  the 
social  and  industrial  history  of  England  during 
the  last  half-century,  can  doubt  that  when 
Maurice  and  his  friends,  the  Christian  Social- 
ists of  1848,  challenged  our  modern  conse- 
crated regime  of  individualism  and  competition, 
refusing  to  accept  as  final  the  pessimistic 
doo^mas  of  an  economic  science  which  had  for- 
gotten  that  in  the  last  resort  the  problem  w^as 
not  about  wealth  but  about  men ;  that  when 


16       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORDS    PEAYER 

they  endeavoured  to  formulate  a  social  science 
in  which  co-operation  rather  than  competition 
should  be  the  true  law  of  industrial  relation- 
ships, and  when  they  did,  in  fact,  succeed  in 
laying  the  foundation  of  what  has  proved  the 
most  hopeful  industrial  experiment  of  the 
century — the  organization  of  the  great  co- 
operative movement — that  when  they  fought 
the  early  battles  of  sanitary  reform,  and  laid 
down  those  principles  of  the  science  of  public 
health,  whose  legal  enforcement  now  forms  so 
large  a  part  of  the  administrative  work  of 
municipalities  and  other  local  authorities;  and 
that  when,  finally,  because  the  public  remedy 
of  social  evils  always  runs  up  at  last  into 
moral  considerations,  they  endeavoured,  and 
not  altogether  in  vain,  to  awaken  the  con- 
science of  both  the  English  Church  and  the 
English  people  to  regard  all  these  great 
questions  from  the  Christian  point  of  sight; 
no  one,  I  say,  can  doubt  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  Incarnation,  as  Maurice  accepted  it,  as  the 
true  basis  and  centre  of  all  Christian  social 
philosophy,    was    the    master    note    of    their 

teaching. 

And  because  this  was  so,  because  his  social 
teaching  was  always  in  close  touch  with  his 
theology,    Maurice   could   never   endure    any 


SOCIAL    ORDER  17 

action  on  the  part  of  his  Christian  socialist 
followers  which  seemed  to  imply  that  society 
ought  not  to  he  l)uilt  up  on  the  selfish  and 
competitive  instincts  of  mankind.  It  was  of 
the  essence  of  his  Christian  faith  to  believe 
that  it  tvas  not.  To  him  the  very  first  words 
of  the  Paternoster,  of  the  ''  Onr  Father,"  were 
a  proof  that  God's  order  vjas  founded  on 
mutual  love  and  fellow  help.  Selfishness  and 
competition  were  the  direct  results  of  man's 
disorder.  Human  society,  on  the  warrant  of 
that  prayer,  he  held  to  be  a  Divine  creation. 
He  could  not  therefore  tolerate  any  method 
or  system  which  seemed  to  imply  that  it  was 
man's  business  to  construct  some  new  and 
improved  form  of  society — ''  a  new  moral 
order,"  as  the  Owenite  Socialists  were  fond  of 
asserting  —  rather  than  to  assume  that  the 
existing  form  of  society,  with  its  divinely 
created  obligations  of  the  family,  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood, of  the  nation,  was  the  best,  if  men 
would  only  pay  reverent  homage  to  these 
obligations. 

"Christian  Socialism,"  he  said,  '*is  in  my 
mind  the  assertion  of  God's  order.  Every 
attempt,  however  feeble,  to  bring  that  order 
forth  I  honour  and  desire  to  assist.  Every 
attempt  to  hide  it  under  a  great  machinery, 


18       SOCIAL    TEACHING   OF   THE   LORD'S   PRAYER 

call  it  organization  of  labour,  central  board,  or 
what    you    like,    I    must   protest   against    as 
hindering  the  gradual  development  of  what  I 
regard  as  a  Divine  purpose,  as  an  attempt  to 
create   a   new  constitution    of  society,   when 
what   we  want  is  that   the  old  constitution 
should  exhibit  its  true  functions  and  energies." 
I  well  remember  hearing  him,  in  the  course 
of    lectures    on   Social    Moralitij    which    he 
was  then  delivering  at  Cambridge,  use  these 
^^lOY^i^ — *' According    to    the    Christian    creed, 
the  authority  of  a  father,  the  obedience  of  a 
son,  lies  at  the  root  of  the  universe,  is  implied 
in    its    constitution.     In    a   living    spirit    the 
authority    and    the    obedience    are    for    ever 
united.     After  this  image  it  is  dechared  that 
man  is  created  :    the  perfect  humanity  is   in 
the  Son  of  God.  .   .  .   Absolute  faith  or  trust 
in  His  Father  is  declared  to  be  the  character- 
istic  of   Him   who    took   man's    nature    upon 
Him  ;  such  faith  or  trust,  exalting  men  above 
themselves,  makes  them  partakers  of  the  true 
human  life.     The   Son   of  INIan  is  announced 
as  the  Brother  of  all  men,  one  who  has  entered 
into  the  conditions  of  the   poorest,  the  most 
sufferinor  of  them,  one  who  has  endured  their 
death.    Men  are  proclaimed  to  have  a  universal 
brotherhood  in  Him.     Lastly,  the  principle  of 


SOCIAL   ORDER  19 

the  kingdom  of  Heaven  is  said  to  be  that  the 
chief  of  all  is  the  servant  of  all :  the  Kino-  of 
Heaven  having  become  in  very  deed  a  servant 
of  His  creatures.  .  .  .  This  belief  in  an  in- 
visible and  righteous  government,  a  govern- 
ment over  men,  over  the  earth,  was  involved 
in  the  original  idea  of  the  Church.  If  at  any 
time  the  teachers  of  the  Church  lose  their  faith 
in  this  invisible  government,  they  become 
eager  to  define  their  own  rights  and  powers, 
so  the  sense  of  service  is  lost,  so  the  domestic 
character  of  the  government  is  lost." 

I  have  often  thought  of  these  words  of  my 
old  Cambric!  o^e  teacher  durino^  the  social  and 
economic  difficulties  and  controversies  of  the 
last  thirty  years.  They  are  quite  simple 
words.  But  they  contain,  so  at  least  it  seems 
to  me,  a  more  helpful  interpretation  of  the 
true  constitution  of  human  society  than  any 
that  I  can  find  in  all  the  other  books  of 
sociology  that  I  have  ever  read. 

At  any  rate  that  is  the  interpretation  which 
I  desire  to  pass  on  to  you  to-day. 

Place  these  words  of  Christ,  "Our  Father 
which  art  in  heaven,  Hallowed  be  Thy  Name. 
.  .  .  Thy  will  be  done  in  earth,  as  it  is  in 
heaven,"  side  by  side  with  the  life  of  Christ  on 
earth,  that  perfect  exhibition  of  the  harmony 


20      SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF   THE    LORD's   PRAYER 

of  the  human  and  Divine  will,  and  in  the 
light  which  is  thrown  upon  that  life  by  the 
doctrine  of  His  pre-incarnate  personality,  and 
do  not  these  principles  converge  to  strengthen 
our  faith  in  God's  good  government  of  the 
world  ? 

Jesus  Christ  in  proclaiming  a  fatherly 
will  as  the  origin  of  all  life,  and  as  the  root 
of  humanity^  reveals  to  man  the  Divine  order 
under  ivhich  he  is  living. 

There  is  therefore  an  order  of  society 
ivhicli  is  the  best,  and  towards  this  order  the 
world  is  gradually  moving  according  to  a 
definite  Divine  plan.  God  has  been  ivorh- 
ing  and  still  works,  and  mans  duty  and 
true  effort  lies  in  letting  God  work,  through 
conscious  hitman  wills. 

My  friends,  without  that  faith  I  confess  I 
cannot  see  how  we  are  to  reconcile  the  per- 
plexities which  abound  in  the  order  of  nature 
and  of  society,  much  less  account  for  the 
existence  of  a  Church  which  uses  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  which  starts  from  a  belief  in  a  Father 
in  heaven.  Without  that  faith  I  do  not  see 
how  we  are  to  answer  the  arguments  of  the 
social  agnostic,  of  the  man  who  contends,  as 
does  the  naturalist  philosopher  in  Mr.  Balfour's 
book  on  The  Foundatioyis  of  Belief  that  the 


SOCIAL    ORDER  21 

very  existence  of  man  is  an  accident,  that  his 
history  of  blood  and  tears,  of  helpless  blunder- 
ing, of  wild  revolt,  of  stupid  acquiescence,  of 
empty  aspiration,  is  but  a  brief  and  transitory 
episode  in  the  life  of  one  of  the  meanest  of  the 
planets. 

But  with  that  faith  all  is  changed.  God 
has  a  plan  for  the  world,  a  great  educational 
plan  by  which  both  the  perfection  of  the 
individual  and  the  perfection  of  the  race  is  to 
be  accomplished.  Order  and  progress  in  human 
civilization  are  real.  Progress  is  not  only  a 
vital  fact  of  human  existence,  it  is  its  vital 
law.  The  principle  of  human  evolution  is 
true,  for  it  means  a  striving  ever  towards  the 
holier  and  the  happier.  There  may  be  almost 
infinite  powers  against  us,  but  at  least  there 
is  a  deep-laid  scheme  working  towards  goodness 
and  happiness. 

Of  course  I  am  quite  well  aware  of  the 
objections  that  may  be  advanced  against  this 
doctrine.  They  are  objections  in  these  days 
which  are  common  to  the  philosopher  and  the 
man  in  the  street.  For  example,  some  months 
ago  I  happened  to  be  preaching  in  Leicester 
on  this  same  subject.  At  an  open  conference 
held  afterwards  for  the  purpose  of  discussion 
and  inquiry,  I  was  asked  this  question  by  a 


22      SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

working-man  in  the  audience — "The  lecturer 
speaks  of  God's  good  government  of  the  world, 
and  endeavours  to  base  his  faith  in  a  supreme 
will  on  the  facts  of  social  evolution,  but  is  it 
not  true  that  in  the  processes  of  evolution  vice 
has  been  evolved  as  well  as  virtue,  evil  men 
as  well  as  good  men,  a  kingdom  of  the  devil 
as  well  as  a  kingdom  of  God  ?  How  then,  with 
these  facts  to  face,  can  he,  without  violence  to 
his  reason,  believe  in  a  good  God  ?  " 

The  criticism,  as  you  see,  was  a  pertinent 
one.  It  is  an  echo,  of  course,  of  the  arguments 
with  which  many  of  us  were  familiar  thirty 
years  ago  in  John  Stuart  Mill's  Essays  on 
Religion. 

"  Everything,"  said  that  writer,  "  which 
the  worst  men  commit,  either  against  life  or 
property,  is  perpetrated  on  a  larger  scale  by 
natural  agents.  Nature  has  noyades  more 
fatal  than  those  of  Carrier ;  her  explosions  of 
fire-damp  are  as  destructive  as  human  artillery  ; 
her  plague  and  cholera  far  surpass  the  poison 
cups  of  the  Borgias.  Even  the  love  of  '  order,' 
which  is  thought  to  be  a  following  of  the  ways 
of  nature,  is  in  fact  a  contradiction  of  them.  .  . 
Anarchy  and  the  Reign  of  Terror  are  over- 
matched in  injustice,  ruin,  and  death  by  a 
hurricane   and   a  pestilence." 


SOCIAL    ORDER  23 

Four  years  ago  Mr.  Huxley  repeated  Mill's 
arguments,  and  carried  tliem  perhaps  a  step 
further,  in  his  Romanes  Lectures  in  this  place. 

''  Cosmic  nature,"  said  that  great  writer, 
"  is  no  school  of  virtue,  it  is  the  headquarters 
of  the  enemy  of  ethical  nature.  .  .  The  thief 
and  the  murderer  follow  nature  just  as  much 
as  the  philanthropist." 

In  my  next  sermon  on  *'  Social  Progress"  it 
will  be  necessary  to  deal  with  the  fallacy  of 
this  argument  in  further  detail.  For  to-day  I 
must  be  satisfied  to  quote  to  you  a  passage 
from  a  book  of  ^'  Christian  Apology  "  which  I 
venture  to  think  is  among  the  most  valuable 
that  our  generation  has  seen.  Dr.  Abbott,  in 
The  Sjnrit  on  the  Waters,  lias  said,  in  answer 
to  Mr.  Huxley's  argument,  "  We  contend  not 
only  that  cosmic  nature  must  be  called  a 
'  school  of  virtue,'  but  also  that  it  ought  not 
to  be  called  a  '  school  of  vice.'  ...  *  Cosmic 
nature,'  taken  in  its  fullest  sense,  shows  signs, 
not  only  of  ethical  and  non-ethical,  divine  and 
diabolical  results,  but  also  of  an  ethical  or  divine 
purpose,  suhordinating  the  non-ethical  to  the 
ethical,  the  diaholical  to  the  divine.  Tiberius 
is  not  to  be  reo-ardecl  as  having;  followed  nature 
(in  the  full  sense  of  cosmic  evolution)  'just 
as  much    as'  Socrates.     It  is  as  false  to  say 


24       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORd's    PRAYER 

this  as  to  say  that  a  mad  hound,  snapping  at 
the  rest  of  the  pack,  follows  nature  'just  as 
much  as  '  the  dogs  that  are  sane.  '  The  thief 
and  the  murderer'  on  the  whole  have  not 
survived  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  but  have 
gone  to  the  wall,  thereby  proving  that  they 
were  against  'cosmic  nature.'  If  they  had 
regarded  cosmic  nature  as  a  school  of  virtue, 
and  obeyed  the  teaching,  they  would  have,  on 
the  whole,  survived ;  not  having  done  so,  they 
have,  on  the  whole,  perished.  .  .  AVe  simply 
point  out,  therefore,  that  unbelievers  who  reject 
a  '  belief  in  a  good  God,  under  cover  of  appeal 
to  cosmic  nature,  are  disowned  by  the  power  to 
which  they  appeal.  She  rejects  them,  as  she 
rejects  the  murderer, the  thief,and  the  adulterer. 
They  can  all  say,  '  Cosmic  nature  made  us 
what  we  are.'  Cosmic  nature  answers  by 
destroying  them.  .  .  .  We  contend  then  that 
cosmic  nature  impels  us  to  believe  reasonably 
in  a  good  God,  rewards  us  if  we  do  so,  and 
jjunishes  us  if  we  do  not.  This  being  so, 
sensible  and  reasonable  people,  who  find  it 
difficult  to  believe,  ought  not  (as  it  seems  to 
us)  to  lay  the  blame  on  nature  or  reason,  but 
on  some  violation  of  nature  and  reason  in 
themselves,  or  possibly  on  self-deception " 
(pp.  19-22). 


SOCIAL    ORDER  25 

My  friends,  I  venture  to  say,  that  the  man 
who  has  mastered  this  doctrine,  he  who 
recognizes  the  slow  and  subtle  process  of 
evolution  as  the  way  iu  which  God  makes 
things  come  to  pass,  as  the  action  of  the 
Eternal  Word  "  through  whom  the  ages  were 
made,"  has  found  a  Christian  faith,  which  so 
far  from  cheapening,  as  some  narrow-minded 
religionists  would  tell  us,  the  value  of  human 
life,  adds  immeasurably  to  the  glory  of  man's 
destiny,  enlarges  tenfold  the  significance  of 
human  life,  for  such  a  faith  shows  us  how, 
after  all,  the  grand  sweep  of  things  is  from 
the  lower  to  the  higher,  the  vast  amount  of 
suffering  and  struggle  and  competition,  on  the 
whole,  doing  the  work  of  raising  nature, 
material  and  human,  into  a  higher  condition, 
making  us  all  feel  with  St.  Paul,  that  "  the 
sufferings  of  this  present  time  are  not  to  be 
compared  with  the  glory  that  shall  be  revealed 
in  us." 

*'  It  is  hard  to  believe  in  God,"  said  Lord 
Tennyson  once,  "but  it  is  harder  not  to  believe. 
I  believe  in  God  not  from  what  I  see  in  nature, 
but  from  what  I  find  in  man.  .  .  .  God  is  Love, 
transcendent,  all-pervading.  But  we  do  not 
get  this  faith  from  nature  or  the  world.  If 
we  look  at  nature  alone,  full  of  perfection  and 


26       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORd's    PRAYER 

imperfection,  she  tells  us  that  God  is  disease, 
murder  and  rapine.  We  get  this  faith  from 
ourselves,  from  what  is  highest  within  us,  which 
recognizes  that  there  is  not  one  fruitless  pang, 
just  as  there  is  not  (as  Browning  says)  *  one 
lost  good.'  " 

We  all  know  how  he  expressed  the  same 
thought  in  immortal  verse  in  the  cantos  of  the 
In  Memoriam : — 

"  I  found  Him  not  in  world  or  sun, 

Or  eagle's  wing,  or  insect's  eye ; 
]^or  thro'  the  questions  men  may  try, 
The  petty  cobwebs  we  have  spun  : 

If  e'er  when  faith  had  fall'n  asleep, 

I  heard  a  voice  '  believe  no  more,' 
And  heard  an  ever-breaking  shore 

That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep ; 

A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 
The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 
And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 

Stood  up  and  answer'd  '  I  have  felt ! ' 

No,  like  a  child  in  doubt  and  fear : 

But  that  blind  clamour  made  me  wise ; 
Then  was  I  as  a  child  that  cries. 

But,  crying,  knows  his  father  near ; 

And  what  I  am  beheld  again 

What  is,  and  no  man  understands ; 
And  out  of  darkness  came  the  hands 

That  reach  thro'  nature,  moulding  men." 

In  our  reading  then  of  human  life  and  of 


SOCIAL    ORDER  27 

cosmic  nature  let  us  cherish    this   optimistic 
faith — 

"  Nature  at  worst  always  implies  success  : 
Earth  changes,  but  the  soul  and  God  stand  sure." 

Two  central  verities,  the  Divine  orderino; 
of  the  social  organism  based  on  the  revelation 
of  a  Fatherly  will,  the  steady  progress  of 
human  character  under  pressure  of  the  eternal 
law  of  filial  existence,  face  us  daily  when  we 
use  the  words — *'  Our  Father  which  art  in 
Heaven.  .  .  Thy  will  be  done  in  earth," — and 
find  too  irresistible  a  confirmation  in  history 
and  consciousness  to  leave  room  for  doubt. 
All  are  parts  of  a  Divine  Order.  That  order 
is  beneficent  and  progressive.  The  apparent 
exceptions  are  but  modes  of  fulfilment  out  of 
which  growth  in  wisdom  builds  new  assurances 
of  faith. 


II 

SOCIAL    PROGRESS 

St.  Matt.  vi.  9,  10:  *'Our  Father  which  art 
in  Heaven  .  .  .  Thy  Kingdom  come  ...  in 
earth." 

Was    Jesus     Christ    an    optimist,     a    social 
idealist  ? 

Was  the  "  kingdom  of  God  "  for  which  He 
taught  His  disciples  to  pray,  a  Utopia,  or  a 
practical  possibility  ?  Does  the  alternative 
term,  "  kingdom  of  Heaven,"  imply  perhaps 
only  an  ideal  kingdom,  conceived,  as  it  were, 
in  poetic  thought,  as  hovering  above  all  actual 
societies,  civil  and  sacred,  like  the  Republic 
of  Plato,  or  the  De  Monarchia  of  Dante,  or 
the  Utopia  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  to  be  realized 
nowhere  on  this  earth,  its  true  home  being 
among  the  romantic  visions  of  a  supersensible 
dreamland  ? 

Jesus  Christ  was  certainly  no  idealist,    no 

28 


SOCIAL   PROGRESS  29 

optimist  in  the  common  sense  of  the  word. 
He  was  under  no  deception,  either  of  senti- 
ment or  pathetic  fallacy,  as  to  the  actual  facts 
of  existence.  For  from  the  first  He  certainly 
taught  that  the  world  was  full  of  evil ;  that  an 
adversary,  an  "  evil  one,"  was  contending 
against  God  and  against  goodness ;  that 
entrance  into  the  "  kingdom  of  God "  was 
difficult,  implied  a  strain  and  an  effort  to 
which  all  would  not  be  equal ;  and  that  the 
keenest  trials  awaited  both  Himself  and  His 
disciples  before  the  consummation  could  be 
attained. 

But  that  Jesus  Christ  was  an  idealist,  an 
optimist,  in  one  very  true  sense,  we  may  infer 
from  the  effect  which  His  teaching  had  upon 
the  minds  and  conduct  of  those  who  first  heard 
it.  The  disciples  of  Christ  welcomed  His 
teaching  as  good  news  ;  they  conducted  them- 
selves as  men  who  had  received  a  message  of 
gladness  and  joy.  They  were  no  mere  pilgrims 
faring  to  a  distant  shrine,  grim,  gloomy  ascetics, 
self-concentrated  devotees,  doing  penance  for 
their  sins.  They  fasted  not  like  the  disciples 
of  John  Baptist ;  they  were  rather  like  people 
going  to  a  wedding,  it  was  said,  children  of 
the  Bride-chamber  glad  in  the  sunny  presence 
of  the  Bridegroom,  a  happy  company  of  ex- 


30       SOCIAL   TEACHING   OF   THE   LOED's    PRAYER 

pecfcant  enthusiasts,  joyous,  hopeful,  free,  like 
men  looking  on  towards  a  golden  age  just 
within  sight — a  city  of  God,  whose  gates  were 
open  to  all  comers  on  one  condition  only,  that 
they  conduct  themselves  as  good  citizens  once 
they  are  wdthin  its  w^alls — a  city  of  God  which 
is  a  kingdom  of  grace,  not  because  it  is  a 
kingdom  of  holiness,  but  in  order  that  it 
should   become   such. 

And  it  is  because  of  this  optimism  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  of  its  origin,  that  not  only  the 
disciples  of  old  had  grounds  for  their  attitude 
of  joyous  enthusiasm,  but  that  w^e  who  claim 
to  be  His  disciples  now  have  justification  for 
the  same  attitude.  We  believe  that  Jesus  was 
the  prophet  of  immortality  and  the  prophet 
of  progress.  We  believe  that  He  was  the 
prophet  of  the  future,  because  He  fixed  Plis 
gaze  on  the  present  wdth  such  intense  concen- 
tration of  vision  that  He  pierced  into  the  very 
heart  of  things,  and  saw  there  the  everlasting 
fountain  of  the  soul,  the  inexhaustible  source 
from  which  the  stream  of  human  progress  ever 
flows.  We  l^elieve  that  He  was  the  prophet 
of  the  future,  because  He  was  the  poet  of  the 
eternal  present,  because  He  saw  the  eternal 
beauty  of  the  present,  the  beauty  of  its  sorrow 
as  well  as  its  joy. 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  31 

Times  and  seasons ! — this  was  the  thoufrht 
at  the  heart  of  His  message — times  and 
seasons,  they  pass  and  are  siuaUoived  up, 
hut  eternity  is  notv  and  ever  shall  be.  Each 
place,  each  loorld,  may  change  and  dis- 
appear,  hut  I  remain,  and  shall  alivays  say 
Here  I  live.  Personality  persists.  Character 
is  eternal.  The  kingdom  is  ivithin  you.  The 
soul  is  immoi^tal,  its  kingdom  of  Heaven  is 
here,  its  eternal  ivorld  is  noiv ! 

And  because  He  who  held  that  faith  was 
one  who  was  called  the  Man  of  Sorrows,  the 
despised  and  rejected  of  men,  who  had  no- 
where to  lay  His  head,  one  who  had  more 
intimate  acquaintance  with  pain  than  any  one 
before  or  since,  whose  own  life  was  the  typical 
tragedy  of  mankind,  and  yet  was  one  of  whose 
sublime  optimism,  of  whose  radiant  view  of 
human  nature,  and  its  potential  goodness,  no 
word  of  recantation  could  be  drawn,  either  by 
the  moral  agony  of  which  in  the  garden  of 
Gethsemane  the  bloody  sweat  was  the  symbol, 
or  by  the  physical  agony  of  which  on  the 
mount  of  Calvary  the  death  on  the  cross  was 
the  reality,  we  believe  that  we  too  have 
grounds  for  our  optimistic  faith  in  the  present 
kingdom  ;  faith  in  human  nature  as  it  exists  in 
the  thouo'ht  of  God ;  faith  in  man  as  he  ought 


32      SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF   THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

to  be  and  will  be ;  faith  in  God  as  the  Father 
of  man  ;  faith  in  man  as  the  son  of  God  ;  faith 
that  the  outcome  of  the  evolution  of  all  things 
will  be  found  to  be  good ;  faith  that  good  will 
ultimately  prevail  over  evil ;  faith  that  sin 
itself  will  ultimately  be  seen  to  have  been 
subordinated  to  the  purpose  of  a  higher 
righteousness  than  could  have  been  attained 
if  man  had  never  sinned. 

Let  us  consider  a  little  more  in  detail  the 
grounds  of  this  faith. 

The  kingdom  of  Heaven — the  kingdom  of 
God — the  kingdom  of  Christ — there  are  no 
more  familiar  phrases  to  us  in  Holy  Scripture 
than  these.  They  bring  vividly  before  us 
the  primitive  ideas  of  Christianity.  They  are 
an  epitome  of  the  life  and  mission  of  Christ, 
of  the  work  by  His  apostles.  ''  Tell  us  where 
is  He  that  is  born  King,  for  we  are  come  to 
worship ! "  are  the  words  in  which  the  wise 
men  from  the  East  desired  to  do  earliest 
homage  to  the  Child-King  in  the  manger- 
cradle  of  Bethlehem.  "Art  Thou  a  King 
then  ?  "  are  the  words  with  which  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  Csesars  preluded  that  last 
scene  which  ended  on  the  altar-throne  of 
Calvary.  The  message  which  the  herald  of 
Christ   was    commissioned    to    proclaim,    the 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  33 

message  with  which  Christ  Himself  opened 
His  public  ministry,  was  the  advent  of  a 
kingdom.  After  His  Eesurrection  He  spoke 
with  His  disciples  of  "the  things  pertaining 
to  the  kingdom  of  God." 

What  then  is  this  kingdom  ?  How  shall  we 
define  it  to  om^selves  ? 

TJie  words  in  which  it  was  first  proclaimed 
seem  to  apply  a  Judaistic  or  Rabbinic  origin. 
''  The  time  is  fulfilled,  and  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  at  hand." 

Yes,  the  kingdom  was  a  Divine  theocracy, 
as  conceived    by   the    Jewish    prophets.     But 
it   was   something   more.     The    theocracy    of 
Christendom    is   the    Jewish    idea    expanded, 
enlarged,  sublimated.     It  is  the  righteous  Eeign 
of  God  upon  earth.     It  is  the  recognition  of  a 
divine  righteousness  in  all  the  relations  of  life. 
It  is  human  civilization  regarded  as  the  out- 
come of  a  Divine  order,  of  a  society  in  which 
the  authority  of  a  father,  the  obedience  of  a 
son  is  regarded  as  lying  at  the  root  of  the 
universe.     It  is  life  itself,  the  whole  of  life, 
in  every  phase  of  its  progressive  activity,  in 
all  its  realms  of  thought  and  action  and  feel- 
ing,   subordinated    to    the    law    of  a    King, 
who  is  "  Head  over  all  things  to  the  Church, 
which  is  His  body,  the  fullness  of  Him  that 


D 


34      SOCIAL   TEACHING   OF   THE    LOED's    PRAYER 

filleth  all  in  all."  It  is  a  present  reality  in 
which  we  may  live  to-day,  if  we  please,  if  we 
are  willino^  to  rule  our  lives  in  subordination 
to  its  King,  if  as  citizens  we  are  willing,  up  to 
the  measure  of  our  powers,  to  embody  its 
characteristic  "notes."  It  is  not  "eating  and 
drinking,  but  righteousness  and  peace  and  joy 
in  the  Holy  Ghost."  It  is  a  new  social  order, 
"it  is  the  social  incorporation  of  a  spirit 
which  penetrates  and  hallows  every  region 
of  human  activity,  of  a  spirit  which  con- 
secrates for  the  common  service  every  variety 
of  heritao'e  and  endowment,  which  combines 
in  a  harmonious  union  the  manifold  energies 
of  enterprise,  which  crowns  every  faithful 
servant  with  a  blessedness  which  none  can  take 
awav  or  disturb." 

When,  therefore,  we  pray  the  Lord's  Prayer 
aright,  when  we  take  this  petition  unto  our 
lips,  and  say,  as  we  do  daily,  "  Th}^  kingdom 
come  ...  in  earth,"  we  mean  to  say,  Ma}^ 
the  religion  of  Christ  as  a  sovereign  society, 
as  a  power,  as  a  loyalty,  as  a  service,  be  a 
conquering,  quickening,  stimulating,  controlling 
influence  on  all  the  realms  of  human  thought 
and  action,  history,  philosophy,  ethics,  law, 
politics,  art,  science ;  may  that  new  order  of 
society,   which   "  by    divers    portions    and    in 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  35 

divers  manners,"  is  gradually  being  worked 
out  on  the  field  of  history,  find  at  last  its  perfect 
fulfilment  in  that 

"  one  far-off  Divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves." 

It  is  true  that  in  upholding  such  an 
interpretation  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
Lord's  Prayer  with  regard  to  the  constitution 
of  society  we  shall  meet  with  difticulties  and 
objections.  Such  objections  we  must  be  ready 
to  face.  They  will  come  chiefly  from  two 
opposite  directions. 

I.  In  the  first  place,  we  shall  meet  with  those 
who  think  that  such  a  doctrine  is  founded  on  a 
false  interpretation  of  Scripture  itself. 

For  example,  I  take  up  from  my  study  table 
a  pamphlet  criticism  of  "  Christian  Socialism." 
I  find  on  an  early  page  such  sentences  as 
these — ^'  Writers  professing  to  be  Christian 
Socialists  naturally  appeal  to  Holy  Scripture. 
But  their  misuse  of  Scripture  is  lamentable  .  .  . 
It  is  interesting^  to  recall  that  Christ  Himself 
expressly  tells  us  that  '  His  kingdom  is  not 
of  this  world  ; '  and  that  when  one  '  said  unto 
Him,  Master,  speak  to  my  brother, that  he  divide 
the  inheritance  with  me,  He  said  unto  him, 
Man,  who  made  Me  a  judo;e  or  a  divider  over 


36       SOCIAL   TEACHING   OF   THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

you  ?  .  .  .  Take  heed  and  beware  of  covetous- 
ness.'  "  And  then  there  follows  an  argument 
something  of  this  kind. 

"  Jesus  Christ  did  not  come  in  any  sense  as 
a  social  reformer,  much  less  as  a  politician. 
'  His  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world.'  He 
came  to  diseno^ao-e  men's  souls  from  the  cares 
of  this  world.  He  saw  with  perfect  clearness 
that  man's  indiiference  to  the  only  true  life, 
the  life  of  the  spirit,  his  want  of  philosophy 
and  morality,  came  almost  entirely  from  the 
distractions  of  society,  the  cares  of  the  world, 
the  deceitfulness  of  riches.  '  Beware  of 
covetousness.'  Christ  proposed  therefore  to 
detach  men  from  all  these  things,  to  break  off 
his  friendship  with  the  world,  which  in  reality 
meant  enmity  with  God.  He  taught  His 
disciples  that  to  be  wise  or  to  be  learned,  or 
to  be  peaceful  or  to  be  happy,  much  more  to 
be  rich,  was  a  snare  and  a  peril  to  the  true 
believer.  Social  reform,  therefore,  was  no 
part  of  the  Christian  scheme  of  salvation. 
There  is  no  Christian  ideal  for  secular  society, 
only  for  the  individual.  Distinctively  Christian 
principles  do  not  govern,  and  were  never  in- 
tended to  govern,  the  corporate  life  of  a 
community,  a  state,  or  a  city,  until  all  the 
individuals  in  that  community  were  more  or 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  37 

less  completely  transformed  by  those  principles. 
Business,  for  example,  is  business.     It  goes  on 
with  a  steady,  constant  stream.    Manufacturing, 
transporting,    buying,   selling,  banking,    have 
their  inexorable  necessities,  and  form"  a  very 
large  part  of  human  life,  regulated  by  inevitable 
economic  laws,  and  it  is  not  the  part  of  Chris- 
tianity to  set  aside  those  laws.     Christianity 
must  work  on  the    Individual.     It  can  only 
work  on  society  in    that  way.     It   can   alter 
the  raw  material  out  of  which  society  is  made. 
It  cannot  alter  the  mould  in  which  it  is  cast. 
There  is  no   political  economy,  no  princij^les 
for  the  social  order  of  to-day,  in  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount,  or  in  the  parables,  or  anywhere 
else  in  Christ^s  teaching.     Such   economic  or 
sociological  maxims  as  may  seem  to  be  there 
are  entirely  metaphysical,  and  to  be  interpreted 
of  course  in  a  merely  spiritual   sense.     The 
discii^le  of  Christ,  as  such,  is  to  renounce  the 
world,    to   lay   up   no    treasure   upon    earth. 
Wealth    is    but   a  root  of   evil;    elements   of 
progress  and   civilization  are  of  no   moment. 
Secular  happiness  is  altogether  of  secondary 
concern.     What  the  true  Christian  has  to  do 
is  to  endeavour  by  patience  and  perseverance, 
by  humility  and  repentance,  by  faith  in  the 
Eedeemer,  and   through   the    efficacy   of  the 


38       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

sacraments  of  the  Church,  to  secure  eternal 
happiness  in  Heaven.  To  copy  Christ  in 
resisting  not  evil,  in  giving  to  him  that  asketh, 
in  abstaining  from  food,  in  adopting  humility 
and  poverty  and  simplicity,  is  not  in  order 
that  we  may  live  a  more  perfectly  social, 
altruistic,  neighbourly  life  here  below,  but  in 
order  that  we  may  prepare  our  souls  for  a  life 
of  spiritual  blessedness  hereafter." 

But  what  a  foolish  travesty  of  Christ's 
Gospel  is  this  ! 

True,  Christ  did  indeed  say,  "  My  kingdom 
is  not  of  this  world  ...  is  not  from  hence." 
But  He  certainlv  did  not  mean  that  His 
kingdom  was  to  exist  for  certain  objects  which 
are  to  be  marked  off  as  spiritual,  apart  from 
the  organization  of  human  society  which  is  to 
be  regarded  as  profane.  He  certainly  did  not 
mean  to  say  that  His  kingdom  claimed  no 
authority  over  this  world,  had  nothing  to  do 
with  it.  Nor  indeed  did  He  say  that.  AVhat 
He  did  say  was  that  His  kingdom  was  from 
above,  that  it  had  not  an  earthly  origin,  did 
not  obtain  its  authority  and  strength  from 
this  world.  So  He  had  also  said  to  His 
Jewish  enemies — "  Ye  are  from  beneath,  I 
am  from  above ;  ye  are  of  this  world,  I  am 
not  of  this  world."     And  it  was  just  because 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  39 

Christ's  kingdom  was  not  from  this  world, 
not  from  beneath,  but  from  above,  that  all 
the  civil  order  in  the  world  was  to  acknow- 
ledore  Him  as  its  Head. 

The  fact  is,  this  theory  of  some  natural 
separation  of  the  Divine  and  secular  provinces 
is  the  mere  refuge  of  a  narrow  and  indolent 
mind,  it  will  not  bear  one  moment's  sincere 
and  thorouo:h  thouorht. 

So  also  of  that  other  misinterpreted  text 
about  the  disputed  inheritance,  or  of  the 
somewhat  similar  instance  of  the  paying  of 
the  didrachma,  or  of  the  dilemma  about  the 
tribute  money  of  Csesar.  Take  the  first  in- 
stance. One  man  out  of  a  multitude  had  said 
to  Jesus,  "  Master,  bid  my  brother  divide  the 
inheritance  with  me."  But  Jesus  was  evi- 
dently angry  at  what  He  perceived  to  be  the 
attempt  of  a  covetous  man  to  make  use  of 
Him.  We  may  almost  assume  that  the  man 
had  tried  the  ordinary  law  and  had  failed. 
At  any  rate  Jesus  indignantly  repels  the 
offensive  attempt  by  intimating  to  the  offender 
that  he  had  come  to  the  wrong  quarter  for  the 
prosecution  of  a  pecuniary  loan.  To  infer, 
therefore,  from  Christ's  indignant  rebuff  thus 
given  to  indecent  covetousness,  that  loyalty 
to  the  civil  order  is  not  a  loyalty  "  from  above," 


40       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

directly  from  God,  but  from  beneath,  is  not 
only  unwarranted,  it  is  almost  exactly  contrary 
to  what  Christ  implies.  And  moreover,  it 
must  be  remembered  in  the  case  before  us, 
that  had  Christ  listened  to  the  probably 
ex  "parte  statement  of  the  plaintiff  in  this  suit, 
reviewed  his  case,  and  given  a  judgment.  He 
might  have  added  a  clause  to  the  law  of 
inheritance  which  the  code  of  every  Christian 
state  throughout  the  ages  would  have  been 
bound  to  embody,  and  which  might  have 
landed  the  lawyers  of  the  future  in  endless 
perplexity.  But  this  Christ  resolutely  refused 
to  do.  With  a  look  and  a  word  He  lifted  the 
whole  question  into  an  atmosphere  where  the 
possibly  miserly  spirit  of  one  brother  and  the 
greediness  of  the  other  appeared  equally  con- 
temptible. "  Beware,"  He  said,  "  of  covetous- 
ness,  for  a  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the 
abundance  of  the  things  which  he  possesseth." 
Let  a  man  understand  that  brotherhood  and 
not  wealth  is  the  true  basis  of  society,  that  if 
you  would  make  society  good  you  must  first 
make  men  good,  and  that  not  what  a  man  has 
got,  but  what  a  man  is,  is  the  important 
thing :  then  there  will  not  be  much  difficulty 
left  in  settling  mere  questions  of  property  and 
inheritance. 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  41 

There  is,  moreover,  another  important  prin- 
ciple with  regard  both  to  the  method  of  Christ's 
teaching  and  also  to  the  working  of  Christ's 
kingdom,  indicated,  I  think,  in  this  incident 
which  it  is  appropriate  to  note  here  before  we 
pass  on. 

The  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  from  one  point 
of  view,  may  be  said  to  contain  the  new  law 
of  the  Christian  commonwealth.  The  great 
features  of  that  commonwealth,  the  character 
and  influence  of  its  citizens,  the  inner  principle 
of  its  legislation,  are  set  forth  in  that  document. 
And  yet  no  one,  I  think,  can  study  that  Sermon 
carefully  without  perceiving  that  what  Christ 
undertook  to  do  for  His  society,  was  not  to 
give  it  a  code  of  legislation,  where  in  section, 
sub-section,  and  schedule  all  ethical  difticulties 
would  be  found  codified  and  ticketed  with 
their  appropriate  fines  and  punishments  for  all 
time,  but  to  give  to  each  member  of  His 
society,  so  far  as  it  was  possible,  such  an 
inspiration  of  loyalty  to  Himself  as  should  give 
to  that  member  a  law-making  power  for  him- 
self. And  Christ's  own  action  was  always  in 
practice  consistent  with  that   method. 

He  found  men  living  in  a  social  system, 
under  certain  relations  to  one  another.  He 
did  His  best  to  alter  those  relations,  to  change 


42       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THP]    LORD  S    PRAYER 

that  evil  social  system.  He  believed  it  was 
possible  to  bring  about  a  better  state  of  things. 
He  believed  that  He  could  make  men  regard 
one  another  as  He  Himself  acted  towards  all 
mankind.  He  Himself  lived  in  the  eternal 
world,  and  acted  towards  men  as  citizens  of 
a  heavenly  kingdom.  He  wished  to  change 
the  social  conditions  and  relations  of  the 
people,  but  He  laid  down  no  political  rules, 
no  constitutional  devices  for  doing  this.  And 
why  ?  Surely,  because  He  knew  that  if  there 
and  then,  at  that  time,  in  Palestine,  He  had 
promulgated  a  model  government  for  that  day, 
it  would  have  stopped  all  progress,  it  would 
have  stereotyped  a  particular  national  form, 
whereas  He  knew  that  all  nations  were  different, 
would  be  different  to  the  end  of  time.  He 
knew  that  to  do  so  would  be  to  deny  the  laws 
of  true  life,  to  deny  the  deepest  want  of 
human  nature,  which  needs  effort  and  discipline, 
and  choice  and  failure,  in  order  that  it  may 
grow  and  flourish.  But  He  laid  down  broad 
principles  of  righteousness  and  truth,  and  love 
and  helpfulness,  and  He  left  His  followers  to 
work  out  the  details  for  themselves. 

And  so  His  kingdom  on  earth,  for  which 
we  daily  pray  in  this  petition,  follows  the 
order    of    true    social    life.      The    evolution 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  48 

of  society — the  unfolding  of  God's  ruling — 
the  coming  of  the  kingdom,  is  therefore  no 
sudden  process.  It  is  slow  and  gradual — 
gradual  as  the  moving  of  the  shadows — and 
as  certain. 

II.  But  let  us  turn  to  another  aspect  of  our 
subject.  I  said  there  was  a  second  direction 
from  which  difficulty  in  the  way  of  belief 
might  come. 

How  are  we  to  hold  an  optimistic  faith  in 
the  ideal  kingdom  of  God,  as  the  sanctification 
of  the  whole  of  human  life  in  all  its  fullness, 
when  we  think  of  the  history  of  man  as  the 
record  of  a  divinely  directed  movement  to  a 
final  goal  of  goodness  ?  How  is  this  petition 
of  our  Paternoster — "  Thy  Kingdom  come  in 
earth!" — affected  by  thsit pai'ttis  temporis,  that 
category  of  our  age,  the  scientific  hypothesis 
of  evolution  ? 

That  theory,  we  all  know,  confronts  us 
frigidly  and  firmly,  with  facts  of  existence, 
facts  of  history  and  human  experience,  from 
which  as  Christians  we  might  perhaps  wish  to 
avert  our  eyes. 

How,  for  example,  does  the  Christian  social 
ideal,  does  the  Christian  philosophy  of  civil- 
ization, look  in  face  of  such  a  verdict  of  the 
evolutionist  as  this  ?  I  quote  from  Mr.  Balfour's 


44       SOCIAL    TEACHIXG    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

Foundations  of  Belief,  Lis  description  of  the 
faith  of  a  naturalist  philosopher. 

"Man,  so  far  as  natural  science  by  itself  is 
able  to  teach  us,  is  no  longer  the  final  cause  of 
the  universe,  the  Heaven -descended  heir  of  all 
the  ages.  His  very  existence  is  an  accident, 
his  story  a  brief  and  transitory  episode  in  the 
life  of  one  of  the  meanest  of  the  planets.  Of 
the  combination  of  causes  which  first  converted 
a  dead  organic  compound  into  the  living  pro- 
genitors of  humanity,  science  indeed  as  yet 
knows  nothing^.  It  is  enous^h  that  from  such 
beginnings  famine,  disease,  and  mutual 
slaughter,  fit  nurses  of  the  future  lords  of 
creation,  have  gradually  evolved  after  infinite 
travail,  a  race  with  conscience  enough  to  feel 
that  it  is  vile,  and  intellioence  enouo;h  to  know 
that  it  is  insignificant.  We  survey  the  past,  and 
see  that  its  history  is  of  blood  and  tears,  of 
helpless  blundering,  of  wild  revolt,  of  stupid 
acquiescence,  of  em23ty  aspirations.  We  sound 
the  future,  and  learn  that  after  a  period,  long 
compared  with  the  individual  life,  but  short 
indeed  compared  with  the  divisions  of  time 
open  to  our  investigation,  the  energies  of  our 
system  will  decay,  the  glory  of  the  sun  will  be 
dimmed,  and  the  earth,  tideless  and  inert,  will 
no  longer  tolerate  the  race  which  has  for  a  mo- 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  45 

ment  disturbed  its  solitude.     Man  will  ^o  down 
into  the  pit,  and  all  his  thoughts  will  perish."^ 

Or  again,  let  the  naturalist  philosopher 
speak  in  his  own  person.  These  are  the 
words  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  :  '^ 

'*  There  is  no  pleasure  in  the  consciousness 
of  being  an  infinitesimal  bubble  on  a  globe 
that  is  itself  infinitesimal  compared  with  the 
totality  of  things.  Those  on  whom  the  unpity- 
iiig  rush  of  changes  inflicts  sufi*erings,  which 
are  often  without  remedy,  find  no  consolation 
in  the  thought  that  they  are  at  the  mercy  of 
blind  forces,  which  cause,  indifi'erently,  now 
the  destruction  of  a  sun,  and  now  the  death 
of  an  animalcule." 

In  my  sermon  last  term  on  the  previous 
clause  of  this  prayer,  I  quoted  a  sentence  from 
the  Romanes  Lecture  of  Huxley,  in  which  that 
able  writer  spoke  of  the  cosmic  process  of 
evolution  as  having  no  sort  of  relation  to  moral 
ends,  being,  in  fact,  "no  school  of  virtue,  but  the 
headquarters  of  the  enemy  of  ethical  nature." 

Let  me  quote  to-day  a  passage  from  that 
same  writer  of  a  more  concrete  type. 

"  Any  one,"  he  says,  in  his  well-known 
criticism    of  the    methods   and    work    of   the 

1  Foundations  0/  Belief ,  pp.  30,  31. 
^  Fortnightly  Review,  June  1895. 


46      SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF   THE   LORD's    PRAYER 

Salvation  Army,  "  any  one  who  is  acquainted 
with  the  state  of  the  population  of  all  great 
industrial  centres,  whether  in  this  or  other 
countries,  is  aware  that,  amidst  a  large  and 
increasing  body  of  that  population,  la  misere 
reigns  supreme.  I  have  no  pretensions  to  the 
character  of  a  philanthropist,  and  I  have  a 
special  horror  of  all  sorts  of  sentimental  rhetoric; 
I  am  merely  trying  to  deal  with  facts,  to  some 
extent  within  my  own  knowledge,  and  further 
evidenced  by  abundant  testimony  as  a 
naturalist ;  and  I  take  it  to  be  a  mere  plain 
truth,  that  throughout  industrial  Europe  there 
is  not  a  single  large  manufacturing  city  which 
is  free  from  a  vast  mass  of  people  whose 
condition  is  exactly  that  described,  and  from 
a  still  greater  mass  who,  living  just  on  the 
edge  of  the  social  swamp,  are  liable  to  be 
precipitated  into  it,  by  any  lack  of  demand 
for  their  produce.  .  .  .  AVhat  profits  it,"  he 
asks,  ''to  the  human  Prometheus  that  he  has 
stolen  the  fire  of  Heaven  to  be  his  servant,  and 
that  the  spirits  of  the  earth  and  the  air  obey 
him,  if  the  vulture  of  pauperism  is  eternally  to 
tear  his  very  vitals,  and  keep  him  on  the  brink 
of  destruction  ? " 

What,  then,  we  ask,  in  face  of  such  sci- 
entific   objections    as    these,    based    on    un- 


SOCIAL  PROGKESS  47 

doubted    facts    of   existence,    should    be    our 
attitude  ? 

In  the  first  place,  I  think,  as  Christians,  as 
men  who  believe  that  there  is  a  Christian 
philosophy  of  civilization,  we  should  boldly 
assert  our  right  to  have  for  ourselves  no  theory 
of  ethics,  of  conduct,  no  science  of  society 
which  affects  to  be  independent  of  our  religious 
creed.  That  is  surely  a  very  natural  demand, 
but  it  is  one  which  the  Christian  student  of 
ethics  has  not  always  made  upon  his  rivals  or 
opponents.  Apparently  he  has  too  often  acted 
as  if  he  thought  his  only  chance  of  winning 
consideration  in  the  field  of  ethics  was  to 
occupy  no  ground  which  was  not  also  common 
to  those  students  of  morals  and  society  to  whom 
deductions  from  Christian  revelation  would  be 
reorarded  as  obsolete.  This  action  seems  to 
me  as  mistaken  as  it  is  timid.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  ought  always  to  start  without  any 
hesitation  from  our  Christian  Creed. 

We  ought  to  begin  our  testimony,  as  Christ 
our  Master  began  His,  with  the  plain  state- 
ment— "  our  kingjdom  thouQ-h  in  this  world  is 
not  of  it."  In  our  view,  whatever  he  may 
be  to  others,  man  is  a  spiritual  being.  The 
organism  of  human  society  belongs  by  its 
essence   to  an  invisible  world.     Its  structure 


48       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LOED's    PRAYER 

is  only  explained  by  its  relations  with  that 
unseen  world.  Looking  back  upon  history, 
we  assert  that  the  social  evolution,  of  which 
science  claims  to  trace  the  method  and  pur- 
pose, exhibits  also  the  working  out  of  a 
spiritual  purpose  and  discipline  for  humanity. 
In  that  history  we  think  we  have  warrant  for 
a  belief  in  an  ideal  social  state,  conjectured  as 
being  perfected  in  the  future,  natural,  and  to 
be  naturally  evolved,  and  we  think  that 
that  ideal  is  not  merely  created  by  our  own 
imaginations,  but  has  been  revealed  as  part  of 
the  original  design  of  our  Creator.  We  regard 
human  life,  in  fact,  as  a  great  educational 
problem,  working  itself  out  according  to  the 
plan  of  God ;  and  that  in  the  progressive 
realization  of  the  Divine  idea  of  human  per- 
fectibility there  is  laid  upon  man  a  twofold 
obligation.  We  believe,  therefore,  that  for 
each  of  us  there  is  a  social  as  well  as  a  per- 
sonal duty.  We  believe  in  personal  duty  re- 
quiring that  we  should  each  daily  strive  to 
render  our  individual  lives  more  worthy  of  that 
filial  relationship  with  our  heavenly  Father 
which  our  Master  came  to  reveal.  But  we 
believe  also  in  social  duty,  requiring  that  we 
should  be  strenuous  in  that  *'  fellow  work  with 
God  "  by  which,  according  to  His  purpose,  the 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  49 

collective  life  of  man  is  gradually  being- 
fashioned  after  the  imaQ;e  of  the  kino-dom  of 
Heaven.  We  believe,  therefore,  in  the  duty 
of  man  to  study  the  providential  laws  by 
which  humanity  has  been  impelled  along  the 
path  of  social  order  and  progress,  and  to  co- 
operate as  far  as  he  can  with  those  laws  in 
order  that  in  human  society  this  double  mani- 
festation of  progress  may  be  seen — all  men 
approximating  to  a  common  level,  but  a  level 
which  is  continually  rising. 

But  believing  all  this,  the  Christian  student 
of  civilization  is  not  in  the  least  concerned  to 
deny  any  of  the   verified   conclusions  of  the 
science  of  evolution.     Bather  he  will  welcome 
with  admiration  and  thankfulness  all  that  it 
may  truly  discover,  as  so  much  revelation  of 
the    creative    methods    of   the    Divine  Father 
whom  he  worships.     Nay,  he  may  perhaps  be 
obliged  to  go  further.     He  may  find  it  necessary 
even,  in  deference  to  the  just  claims  of  modern 
science  and  the  new  terms  of  modern  thought, 
to  re-state  for  the  present  age  the  dogmas  of 
his  faith,  to  readjust  its  doctrines,  to  refocus 
its  truth.   But  one  thing  he  will  not  do.    He  will 
not  give  up  his  faith  in  the  Divine  fatherhood  of 
God,  and  the  filial  relationship  of  man  as  the 
true  basis  of  social   order,  or  his  belief  in  a 


50       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

good  God,  controlling  all  the  forces  of  evolu- 
tion, as  the  true  source  of  social  progress. 
Whatever  Nature  may,  therefore,  appear  to  be 
to  the  scientific  evolutionist,  to  the  Christian 
evolutionist  it  must  ever  remain  precious  as 
the  sphere  in  which  a  Divine  life  is  manifested, 
as  the  object  on  which  a  Divine  love  is 
lavished.  If  Mr.  Huxley  was  right  when 
he  told  us  that  "  cosmic  force  has  no  sort 
of  relation  to  moral  ends,"  then  as  Christians 
we  shall  call  in  ethical  force  to  redress 
the  balance,  and  we  shall  say  that  that 
theory  of  evolution  is  incomplete  which  claims 
to  estimate  the  influence  of  the  cosmic  process 
on  man  in  society,  and  fails  to  give  its  due 
weis^ht  to  the  ethical.  Yes,  indeed,  for  us 
Christians  we  shall  demand  a  wider  and  a 
nobler  conception  of  evolution  as  the  way  in 
which  God  makes  things  to  come  to  pass,  a 
conception  in  which,  though  the  prehistoric 
triumphs  of  cosmic  nature,  the  fierce  struggle 
for  existence,  the  ceaseless  conflict — "  Nature 
red  in  tooth  and  claw  with  ravin  " — cannot  be 
forgotten  (shall  we  ever  forget  the  mystery  of 
evil  until  perhaps  *'  behind  the  veil  "  we  learn 
its  secret?),  yet  also  a  conception  in  which 
what  we  shall  most  care  to  remember  will  be 
the  greater  and  still  more  marvellous  triumphs 


SOCIAL    PROGRESS  51 

of  the  ethical  process  of  evolution,  not  the 
miracles,  by  which  out  of  fierce  despotism  has 
come  forth  liberty,  out  of  slavery  freedom,  out 
of  selfishness  self-sacrifice,  out  of  might  right, 
out  of  fear  reverence,  out  of  lust  love,  out 
of  the  conflicts  of  self-interest,  morality  and 
virtue ;  ah,  no  !  but  rather  the  marvellous 
triumphs  of  the  grace  of  God  in  the  human 
heart,  by  which  out  of  suff'ering  has  come 
moral  strength  and  nobility  of  character, 
out  of  the  mystery  of  pain  have  grown  the 
marvels  of  spiritual  victory,  out  of  the  fires  of 
trial  has  been  won  the  purity  of  the  soul,  out 
of  failure  borne  nobly  in  the  present  has  been 
gained  for  us  hereafter  a  far  more  exceedinoj 
weight  of  glory,  out  of  martyrdom  has  grown 
moral  supremacy. 

This,  my  friends,  is  the  faith  of  the  Christian 
evolutionist,  the  only  faith,  as  I  believe,  which 
will  give  us  a  safe  assurance  that  the  social 
optimist,  the  visionary,  the  dreamer  is  not  also 
the  fanatic,  the  anarchist,  the  revolutionary,  a 
safe  assurance  that  the  hope  which  seems  to 
be  leading  mankind  onwards  is  other  than  an 
empty  illusion,  "  a  marsh  fire  which  is  leading 
astray  rather  than  a  star  which  guides  ;  "  a  safe 
assurance  that  any  social  reform  which  man 
undertakes    is    not    a    desperate     adventure 


52       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

creating    more    problems    than    it    can    ever 
solve. 

Such  a  faith,  believe  me,  is,  as  Mr.  Balfour 
once  said,  "  no  ray  of  metaphysics  float- 
ing in  the  sunshine  of  sentimentalism,"  for  it 
rests  on  a  positive  basis,  which  only  becomes 
broader  and  firmer  with  the  widening  of  human 
experience.  The  man  of  religious  imagination, 
the  man  to  whom  his  relig;ion,  whatever  else 
it  may  be,  expresses  his  feeling  about  the 
highest  forces  that  govern  human  destiny,  who 
in  observing  the  long  processes  of  time,  and 
appreciating  the  slowly  accumulating  sum  of 
human  endeavour,  is  able,  in  the  words  of 
Browning's  Paracelsus^ 

^'  To  trace  love's  first  beginnings  in  mankind, 
To  know  even  hate  is  but  a  mask  of  love  ] 
To  see  a  good  in  evil,  and  a  hope 
In  ill-success ;  to  sympathize,  be  proud 
Of  man's  half-reasons,  faint  aspirings,  dim 
Struggles  for  truth,  his  poorest  fallacies, 
His  prejudices,  fears  and  cares  and  doubts. 
Which  all  touch  upon  nobleness,  despite 
Their  error,  all  tend  upwardly  though  weak ; 
Like  plants  in  mines  which  never  saw  the  sun. 
But  dream  of  him  and  guess  where  he  may  be, 
And  do  their  best  to  climb  and  get  to  him." 

The  man,  I  sav,  whose  religion  has  thus  tauoht 
him,  by  what  sublime  struggles  generation 
after  generation  of  his  brethren  have  added 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  53 

some  small  piece  to  the  temple  of  human 
freedom,  or  some  new  impulse  to  the  cause  of 
human  progress,  or  some  fresli  ideal  to  the 
types  of  beautiful  or  strong  human  character, 
will  not  only  be  able  to  say  with  Paracelsus — 

«  If  I  stoop 
Into  a  dark  tremendous  sea  of  cloud 
It  is  but  for  a  time  :  I  press  God's  lamp 
Close  to  my  breast ;  its  splendour  soon  or  late 
Will  pierce  the  gloom  :  I  shall  emerge  one  day  : " — 

but  will  also  have  gained  a  conception  of  life 
and  eternity,  of  duty  and  of  destiny,  prompt- 
ing him  to  abundant  moods  of  worship  and 
reverence,  of  deep-seated  gratitude,  and  of 
sovereign  love  ;  and  no  less  inspiring  him  to 
fulfil,  with  new  hope  and  invigorated  endea- 
vour, all  the  traditions  of  beneficent  work  and 
strenuous  service,  to  consecrate  with  joyful 
energies  all  his  powers  to  the  pursuit  of  a 
visible  common  good,  which  honour  must 
always  demand  from  any  Christian  disciple 
who  dares  to  take  daily  upon  his  lips  the 
prayer  of  his  Lord — "Thy  kingdom  come 
.  ...  in  earth." 


Ill 

SOCIAL   JUSTICE 

St.  Matt.  vi.   11  :  "Give   us  this  day  our  daily- 
bread." 

A    PITHY    and    a    pointed    comment    on    this 

petition  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  is  that  of  Bishop 

Isaac  Barrow.     H.e  said — "  A  noble  heart  will 

disdain  to  subsist  like  a  drone  on  the  honey 

gained  by  others'  labour  ;    or  like  vermin  to 

filch  its  food  from  the  public  granary ;  or  like 

a  shark  to   prey   on   the  lesser  fry ;  but  will 

one  way  or  other  earn  his  subsistence,  for  he 

that  doth  not  earn  can  hardly  l)c  said  to  own 

his  daily  bread." 

The  good  bishop,  I  think,  was  right.     For 

although  of  the  seven  petitions  of  the  prayer 

— three  for   God's   glory,  three  for  our  own 

souls,   one    for   our   bodies — one    only    is   for 

earthly  need,  yet  that  one  can  be  no  purely 

selfish,    egoistic    prayer,    for    wdien    we    pray 

54 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  55 

this  petition  as  we  ought  to  pray  it,  *'  Our 
Father,  give  us  day  by  day  our  daily  bread," 
we  pray  surely  even  in  that  one  word  that 
we  may  live  lives  of  honest  industry  and  noble 
aim  and  social  service ;  we  acknowledge  even 
in  that  one  word  that  our  daily  bread  is  a 
gift,  a  gift  from  God,  and  that  therefore  the 
trade  or  profession  or  calling  by  which  we 
get  it,  is  something  about  which,  in  its  daily 
transactions,  we  are  not  ashamed  to  pray  to 
God ;  we  mean,  or  ought  to  mean,  that  as 
our  Master  rejected  the  tempter's  offer,  "  Com- 
mand that  these  stones  be  made  bread,"  so  we 
are  prepared  to  reject  that  offer;  we  mean 
that  we  ask  for  God's  bread,  the  bread  that 
comes  in  the  slow  natural  way  of  honest  toil 
and  happy  industry  and  fellow  work,  and  that 
we  reject  the  devil's  bread,  that  would  seem 
to  come  by  some  quick  magic  or  gambler's 
luck,  or  false  work,  or  plausible  trade  trickery ; 
we  mean  that  we  ask  for  God's  bread,  not 
the  devil's  bread,  an  honest  worker's  bread, 
not  a  thieving  swindler's  bread,  bread  which 
carries  with  it  no  curse  upon  ourselves  or 
others,  but  bread  upon  which  we  dare  to  ask 
God's  Ijlessing  for  ourselves  and  for  our 
children. 

It  is  at  any  rate  from  tliat  point  of  view 


56       SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF    THE   LORD's    PEAYER 

that  I  am  proposing  to  ask  you  to  consider 
this  petition  to-day. 

Social  justice  as  the  basic  principle  of  all 
true  economics,  that  is  my  subject. 

We  are  all  familiar,  no  doubt,  with  the 
interminable  discussion  as  to  the  exact  mean- 
ing of  the  Greek  word — sTrioixriog — used  in 
this  petition  for  the  first  and  only  time  in 
Holy  Scripture,  and  nowhere  else  in  all  Greek 
literature,  and  with  the  various  English  render- 
ino's  of  the  word,  accordino^  as  one  or  other 
derivation  of  it  is  accepted — as  by  both 
the  Authorised  and  Revised  Version,  "  Give 
us  this  day  our  dail}/  bread,"  or  as  in  the 
margin  of  the  Revised  Version,  *'  bread  for 
the  coming  day  give  to  us,"  or  as  by  others 
— "  our  bread  continual  of  the  day  give  to 
us" — "  our  sufficient  bread,"  "  our  convenient 
bread,"  "the  bread  of  our  portion,"  "-the  l)read 
for  our  essential  life,  for  our  eternal,  spiritual 
life  give  to  us,"  or  in  a  more  sacramentarian 
and  mystic  sense,  ''  our  consubstantial  or  super- 
substantial  bread,"  following  the  interpretation 
of  the  African  Fathers,  and  the  implication 
of  St.  Jerome,  who,  in  his  revision  of  the  old 
Latin  text,  substituted  supersuhstantialem 
for  quotidianum  in  St.  Matthew's  version  of 
the  prayer,   a  substitution   which    at    a  later 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  57 

time,  when  knowledo^e  of  the  Greek  tonoue 
died  out,  led  to  many  a  bitter  debate  in  the 
Western  Church,  as  in  the  celebrated  contro- 
versy of  Abelard  with  St.  Bernard.  We  are 
familiar  too  with  the  conjecture,  founded  on 
the  variation  in  the  two  Gospels  of  the  text 
of  the  closing  phrase  of  the  petition — a-rj^sfiov 
or  xaS'  ri^spav,  "this  day"  or  "  day  by  day" 
— which  suggests  that  St.  Matthew  may  be 
giving  the  common  formula  for  Morning 
Prayer,  while  St.  Luke  gives  that  used  at 
Evening,  or  at  any  hour  of  the  day  for  the 
oncoming  space  of  time  that  is  left,  and  with 
the  further  surmise,  leading  to  the  two  con- 
tradictory interpretations,  on  the  one  hand 
that  our  Lord  is  adopting  tlie  common  habit 
of  the  most  pious  of  the  Rabbis,  not  to  pray 
for  the  thincrs  of  the  morrow — '*  rive  us  the 
bread  of  to-day  in  its  day  " — and  on  the  other 
that  He  is  suggesting  the  true  form  of  prayer 
for  the  future,  for  a  succession  of  morrows — 
''  Provide  to-morrow's  bread,  and  give  it  us 
to-day,  lest  we  be  solicitous  for  to-morrow." 

And  whether  we  have  been  puzzled,  as 
St.  Chrysostom  was  before  us,  with  all  these 
variations  of  the  text  and  its  interpretation, 
or  whether  more  happy,  like  the  old  Jewish 
Rabbi,  Jacob  of  Serug,   who,  caring  little  for 


58       SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF   THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

philology  as  sucli,  was  intent  only  to  find  new 
meanings  in  the  Word  through  each  fresh 
derivation  of  it,  we  are  satisfied  to  combine 
the  religious  lessons  thus  deducible  from  all 
the  various  readings,  matters  perhaps  hardly 
at  all  to  us  to-day. 

But  there  is  one  less  obvious  allusion  to 
be  found  in  the  form  of  this  petition,  which 
I  think  we  may  find  suggestive  of  practical 
teaching  and  useful  for  our  purpose.  I 
mean  the  allusion  to  the  teaching  of  the 
nature-parable  of  the  manna  gatherers,  as 
recorded  in  the  old  eJewish  history,  and  as 
interpreted  in  the  Ral)binic  writings,  and  as 
finding  an  echo  in  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul 
in  his  second  letter  to  the  Corinthian  Church. 

It  was  sufiiciently  probable,  a  priori,  that 
the  Lord's  Prayer  should  contain  some  refer- 
ence to  the  o-ivinor  of  the  manna.  For  indeed 
all  through  the  Pabbinic  writings  we  find  prayer 
and  thanksgiving  closely  associated  with  the 
memory  of  the  miracle  of  the  manna,  of  the 
heavenly  bread,  descending  on  the  earth  like 
dew  from  above.  As  in  the  Book  of  Wisdom, 
we  read  of  how  "  God  gave  to  His  people 
angels'  food  to  eat  .  .  .  bread  having  the 
virtue  of  every  pleasant  savour  .  .  .  tempering 
itself  according  to  every  man's  choice  .  .   .  and 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  59 

yet  when  simply  warmed  by  a  faint  sunbeam 
melting  away,  that  it  might  be  known  that 
men  must  rise  Ijefore  the  sun  to  give  God 
thanks,  and  must  plead  with  Him  at  the 
dawnino*  of  the  lio-ht."  So  over  and  over 
again  in  the  sayings  of  the  Fathers,  the  l)read 
from  heaven,  the  manna,  is  descriloed  as  bread 
of  wisdom,  food  for  body,  soul  and  spirit, 
agreeable  to  every  taste ;  and  over  and  over 
again  tlie  guiding  principles  of  God's  good 
providence  and  of  man's  dependence  on  the 
Almighty  Father's  care  are  deduced  from  the 
method  of  its  provision  and  distribution.  One 
can  hardly  miss,  for  example,  the  analogy 
between  the  "  clay  by  day  "  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  and  the  certain  rate  for  every  day, 
a  day's  portion  in  its  day,  and  a  day's  portion 
only,  in  the  provision  of  the  manna,  or  doubt 
that  such  a.  comment  as  that  of  Eabbi  El  ha 
Modai  would  seem  to  the  disciples  quite  in 
the  spirit  of  their  Master's  prayer — "  Who- 
soever has  what  to  eat  to-day,  and  says 
'  What  shall  I  eat  to-morrow  ? '  lo,  such  an 
one  is  wanting  in  faith." 

I  think,  however,  perhaps  the  most  interest- 
ing allusion  in  the  New  Testament  to  this 
old  nature-parable  is  that  of  St.  Paul  in  the 
passage  in  his  second  letter  to  the  Corinthian 


60       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

Church,  in  which  he  hays  down  the  principles 
of  true  almsgiving,  the  principles  of  true 
Christian  Socialism,  shall  we  rather  say,  to 
be  observed  in  face  of  the  difficulties  of  the 
problem  of  poverty  and  wealth  as  he  knew 
it  at  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era  in 
Greece  and  the  Greek  colonies  of  Syria.  It 
is  to  be  found  in  the  eighth  chapter  of  the 
Second  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  It  is  the 
same  chapter,  you  will  remember,  in  which 
occur  those  words  that  in  their  issue  oave 
rise  to  the  movement  of  Saint  Francis  of 
Assisi,  and  the  estal:)lishment  of  the  mendicant 
Orders  in  Europe,  and  for  so  many  years 
furnished  almost  the  central  question  of  theo- 
logical controversy — "  For  your  sakes  He 
became  poor,  that  je  through  His  poverty 
mio[ht  become  rich." 

The  deep  poverty — >i  Kara  ^aSoug  Trrco^sia — 
of  the  Churches  of  Macedonia,  and  the  neces- 
sity of  the  Jewish  Christian  poor  in  Syria,  were 
both  probably  traceable  to  the  same  cause,  the 
long  series  of  miseries  which,  in  the  case  of 
either  province,  had  succeeded  and  accom- 
panied its  conquest  by  the  Komans.  St.  Paul 
of  course  has  to  deal  with  but  a  very  small 
portion  of  the  whole  problem.  He  has  to 
consider  it  in  a  purely  local  form — how  best 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  61 

to  make  the  liberality  of  one  little  circle  of 
his  followers  at  one  place  and  time,  minister 
to  the  poverty  of  the  saints  at  another,  and 
yet  be  so  managed  that  justice  shall  not  be 
sacrificed  to  generosity,  that  the  end  shall  be 
pro23ortioned  to  the  means. 

The  apostolic  decision  is  an  excellent  illus- 
tration of  St,  Paul's  "  sanctified  common 
sense." 

"Let  your  generosity,"  he  says,  "be  pro- 
portioned to  your  means.  This  must  be 
so  always.  Your  generous  zeal,  it  is  true, 
proves  your  Christian  sense  of  brotherhood,  of 
comradeship,  your  love  to  men  for  Christ's 
sake.  You  are  actino;  to  them  as  He  acted 
to  you,  when  on  your  behalf  He  exchanged 
riches  and  poverty.  But  I  have  no  wish  that 
you  should  be  too  heavily  pressed  for  the 
relief  of  others.  There  must  be  reciprocity 
among  Christians,  a  fair  equality  of  service, 
mutual  co-operation  and  assistance.  If  you 
help  now,  they  must  be  ready  to  respond 
hereafter  if  need  come,  so  that  in  any  present 
deed  of  liberality,  or  in  any  future  redistribu- 
tion of  wealth,  the  saying  of  the  old  Scrip- 
ture about  the  nature-parable  of  the  manna 
gatherers  may  be  fulfilled — *  much  was  not 
too  much,  and  little  was  not  too  little,'  that 


62       SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF    THE    LORd's    PRAYER 

there  may  be  equality,  as  it  is  written,  '  he 
that  had  much  had  nothing  over,  and  he  that 
had  little  had  no  lack.' " 

Have  we  not  here,  as  I  said,  the  true 
principles  of  Christian  Socialism,  the  germinal 
idea  at  least  of  true  economics,  from  which 
the  whole  duty  of  man  in  relation  to  his 
industrial  life  may  be  evolved,  and  the  pro- 
duction of  wealth  and  its  distribution  be 
brought  into  due  moral  subordination  to  the 
wider  and  nobler  aims  of  his  intellectual, 
spiritual  and  social  life  ? 

At  any  rate,  if  we  place  this  summary  of  the 
Apostle's  appeal  to  the  Church  of  Corinth  in 
relation  to  the  industrial  problem  of  his  day, 
in  the  light  of  the  essential  principle  of  social 
justice,  which  Bishop  Barrow  thought  he  had 
found  imbedded  in  this  petition  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  we  shall  find  ourselves,  I  think,  in 
possession  of  ethical  principles  quite  sufficient 
to  solve,  if  only  Christians  would  be  Christians, 
not  only  the  comparatively  simple  problem  of 
poverty  as  it  existed  in  the  little  Grecian 
seaport  in  the  first  century,  but  as  it  exists 
to-day  in  England  in  regard  to  the  more 
tremendous  modern  problem  of  capital  and 
labour  in  some  great  Christian  city. 

Let  me  endeavour  to  set  out  some  of  those 


SOCIAL    JUSTICE  63 

principles  in  definite  proportions,  that  you 
may  judge  how  far  they  can  be  legitimately 
read,  one  by  one,  into  the  terms  of  this  petition 
of  the  Lord's  Prayer. 

I.  The  principle  of  social  justice. — The  loss 
of  one  cannot  on  the  whole  be  the  gain  of 
another  in  the  unity  of  the  Christian  life. 
God  is  no  respecter  of  persons.  Inequalities, 
indeed,  of  every  kind  are  interwoven  with  the 
whole  providential  order  of  human  life,  and  are 
recognized  emphatically  by  Jesus  Christ.  But 
the  Christian  social  order  cannot  ignore  the 
interests  of  any  of  its  parts,  and  must,  more- 
over, be  tested  by  the  degree  in  which  it 
secures  for  each  one  of  its  members  freedom 
for  happy,  useful,  untrammelled  life,  and 
distributes  as  widely  and  equitably  as  may 
be  social  advantages  and  opportunities.  A 
system  of  industry  under  which  one  man 
may  acquire  in  a  lifetime — to  quote  a  quaint 
American  figure — as  much  money  as  Adam 
would  have  laid  by  out  of  his  earnings  if  he 
had  lived  to  our  time  and  saved  one  hundred 
dollars  a  day,  cannot  be  a  perfected  system  of 
human  brotherhood.  ''  The  much  must  not 
be  too  much,  and  the  little  not  too  little." 
In  a  Christian  state  every  citizen  ought  to 
have  a  subsistence  before  any  one  has  super- 


64       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF   THE    LOUD's    PRAYER 

fluity.  Luxury  can  only  justifiably  come  into 
existence  when  honest  penury  has  vanished, 
for  luxury  only  then  ceases  to  be  culpable 
when  it  serves  to  make  a  man  a  more  useful, 
a  more  loving,  a  more  helpful  member  of  the 
community.  "  Luxury  can  only  be  enjoyed  " — 
it  was  an  old  saying  of  Mr.  Ruskin — '*by  the 
ignorant ;  the  crudest  man  livino^  could  not 
sit  at  his  feast  unless  he  sat  blindfold." 

"  Our  Father  which  art  in  Heaven,  .  .  .  give 
us  this  day  our  daily  bread  !  "  Give  me,  0 
my  Father,  on  this  new  day  of  Thine,  bread 
sufficient  for  my  need,  and  teach  me  to  seek  it 
always  as  a  gift  from  Thee,  not  only  that  I  may 
eat  it  so  in  gladness  and  singleness  of  heart, 
but  that  I  may  thus  be  saved  from  the  feverish 
desire  to  heap  up  riches  for  myself  And 
because  my  true  life  consisteth  not  in  the 
abundance  of  the  things  which  I  possess,  save 
me  from  the  spirit  of  the  rich  fool,  that  I  may 
be  tempted  to  injure  none,  to  defraud  none,  to 
keep  back  their  due  from  none.  Teach  me  to 
accept  the  lesson  of  the  old  Greek  ascetics, 
that  a  man  is  rich  and  poor  not  in  his  house- 
hold goods  but  in  his  soul.  Give  me  daily 
bread,  the  strong  wholesome  food  of  character, 
that  I  may  give  myself  to  the  cause  of 
social   progress,    to   the    increase    of    human 


SOCIAL    JUSTICE  65 

power  over  circumstance,  to  the  growth  of 
humanizing  wants,  to  the  raising  of  the 
standard  of  life,  to  the  enlargement,  the  enrich- 
ment, the  ennoblement  of  human  joy. 

And  to  pray  this  petition  in  that  spirit  is 
surely  to  pray  the  Lord's  Prayer  aright. 

11.   The  'principle  of  social  sei^vice. — "  He 
that  doth  not  earn  his  daily  bread,"  said  Bishop 
Barrow,  "  can  hardly  be  said  to  own  it ; "  in 
other  words,  this  principle  declares  that  every 
man  is  bound  to  service ;  the  wilfully  idle  man, 
and  the  man  who  lives  only  for  himself,  have 
no  place  in  a  Christian  community ;  that  all 
service  is  honourable  and  all  idleness  a  dis- 
grace ;   that  no  wealth  is  legitimately  earned 
which   is  not  an  exchange   value    for   actual 
services  rendered,  services  which  minister  to 
life  and  help  on  the  common  good  ;    that  to 
get    money    by    whatever    strategy,    by   the 
ganlbling  method  .  whether  of  Turf  or  Stock 
Exchange,  without  furnishing   an   equivalent, 
is  dishonourable  spoliation ;  that  private  pro- 
perty  exists    for    the    sake    of    society,    not 
society    for    the    sake    of    private    property  ; 
that  wealth  is  a  trust,  and  that  men  are  to 
be   measured  not  by  what  they  possess,  but 
by  the  use  they  make  of  their   possessions ; 
that  wealth  does  not  release  its  possessor  from 


66       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LOED  S    PRAYER 

the  obligation  to  work,  but  only  enables  bim 
to  do  what  appears  to  be  unpaid  work  for 
society,  the  only  difference  ethically  between 
the  rich  man  and  the  poor  man  seeming  to  be 
this,  that  the  poor  man  receives  his  wages  at 
the  end  of  the  week,  and  does  not  ofet  them 
unless  his  work  is  first  done,  whereas  the 
wealthy  man  receives  his  wages  first  and  is 
bound  in  honour  to  earn  them  afterwards  ;  that 
thino's  are  for  men,  and  not  men  for  thino^s  ; 
that  any  industrial  system  which  grinds  up 
men  and  women  to  make  cheap  goods  is  an 
un-Christian  system ;  that  no  industrial  system 
can  be  a  Christian  system  until  it  is  so 
oroanized  that  every  honest  and  willino-  worker 
can  find  work,  and  work  so  remunerative  that 
not  only  can  he  maintain  his  own  working 
powers  in  health  and  efficiency,  but  also 
is  able  to  give  to  his  children  a  decent,  a 
joyous,  and  a  reasonable  life  according  to 
the  standard  of  comfort  of  his  class. 

*'  Our  Father  which  art  in  Heaven  .  .  .  mve 
us  this  day  our  daily  bread." 

In  the  breaking  of  my  daily  bread,  grant 
me,  0  Lord,  to  know  Thy  presence,  and  in 
return  for  Thy  gift,  and  as  my  bounden  duty 
and  service,  may  I  offer  to  Thee  the  reasonable 
and  holy  sacrifice  of  my  daily  life  and  work. 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  ^7 

I  am  Thy  workman,  0  Christ,  and  all  that  I 
do  is  Thine.     Prosper  Thou  the  work  of  my 
hand  upon  me,  oh,  prosper  Thou  my  handiwork; 
make  it  sound,  and  good,  and  honest,  worthy 
of  Thy  blessing ;  may  it  never  be  half  work 
done  for  whole  pay,  or  sham  work  palmed  off 
as  true.     And  as  my  daily  bread  is  a  gift  from 
Thee,  a  holy  gift  for  Thy  service,  may  I  ever 
be  strong  to  reject  the  tempter's  offer  to  turn 
stones  into  bread,   to  win  success  in    life  by 
base  means,   hy  the  thieves'  way,  by  taking 
advantage  of  the  weakness  or  ignorance  of  my 
neighbour,  and  rendering  him  no  equivalent  in 
reciprocal  service.     May   I   never   eat  thieves' 
bread,  bread  which  I  have  stolen,  not  earned, 
lest,  like   the  manna  of  old,  it   stink  in   my 
nostrils  and  become   an   abomination    and  a 
loathing.     Fix  firm  my  character  and  life  in 
integrity  and  fearless  truth.     Quicken  in  me 
the  higher  life    of  social   duty.     And  as  the 
bread  I  eat  passes  into  my  veins,  and  under 
the  spell  of  bodily  life  becomes  myself,  and  as 
my  life-blood  builds  up  my  frame,  and  by  my 
actions  done  in  that  strength  passes  out  into 
God's  world,  and  still  is  myself  in  all  I  do,  so 
may  the  living  Bread  from  Heaven,  the  Life 
of  Christ,  in  answer  to  this  my  daily  prayer, 
pass  into  my  spirit  and  become  myself,  and  as 


68       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

a  life-spirit  build  up  an  unseen  frame  of  living 
strength  to  be  offered  as  a  Eucharist  to  God,  and 
by  my  actions  done  in  that  strength  pass  out 
into  God's  world  as  a  quickening  spirit,  giving 
life  and  strength  to  others,  inspiring  others 
to  strive  for  simplicity  in  the  personal  life,  for 
luxury  only  in  the  sharing  of  common  joys, 
helping  on,  if  it  may  be,  in  however  small  a 
degree,  the  coming  of  that  new  fellowship  of 
humanity,  that  new  order  of  society,  founded 
on  industrial  peace  and  forethought,  which 
shall  one  day  put  hope  and  pleasure  in  the 
place  of  fear  and  pain,  as  the  forces  which 
move  men  to  labour  and  keep  the  world 
a-going. 

And  to  pray  this  petition  in  that  spirit  is 
surely  to  pray  the  Lord's  Prayer  aright. 

I T I .  Tlie  2yri7iciple  of  social  resijonsihility . — 
It  was  a  fine  saying  of  Frederick  Maurice,  that 
^'  no  man  can  say  sincerely,  '  Our  brothers  who 
are  on  earth,'  wlio  has  not  first  learnt  to  say, 
'  Our  Father,  which  art  in  heaven.' "  But 
that  principle  of  fraternity,  founded  on  Christ's 
revelation  of  the  filial  relationship  of  man  to 
God,  implies  that  in  the  Christian's  daily  duty 
of  setting  up  the  kingdom  of  God  upon  earth, 
the  society  not  the  individual  must  be  the 
first  centre  of  thought,  that  social  duty  must 


SOCIAL    JUSTICE  69 

always  take  precedence  of  private  right ;   that 
though  there  will  always  be  variety  of  function, 
distinction  of  office,  in  the  one  body  of  which 
every  true  Christian  is  a  member,  there  need 
never  be,  there  ought  not  even  to  be  confusion 
of  responsibihty   in    multiplicity    of  service; 
that  while  character,  individual  character,  in 
the  Christian  citizen  is  the  first  of  social  needs, 
it  must  never   be  forgotten   that   individual 
character  is  influenced  at  every  point  by  social 
environment,  and  that  therefore  in  a  Christian 
order  of  society  the  Christian  community  as  a 
whole  is  morally  responsible  for  the  character 
of  that  order,  for  the  conditions  of  the  social 
environment ;  that  a  corporate  conscience,  an 
active  enlightened  public  ojjinion  must  have 
authority  in  a  Christian  community  to  decide 
to  what  extent  matters  affecting  social  order 
shall  be  left   to  individual  initiative,   to  the 
unregulated  play  of  material  forces,  industrial, 
economic,   or  shall    be   brought  under    direct 
administrative    control;    that   such    a   public 
conscience,    awakened    and    active,    will    best 
secure  the  right  administration  of  our  existing 
social  system,  or  such  a  modification  or  chano-e 
of  it  as  seems  to  be  demanded  by  the  progress 
of  knowledge,  thought  and  life. 

Once  again  then,  as  in  the  thought  of  this 


70       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORd's    PRAYER 

principle  of  social  responsibility,  I  take  this 
petition  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  "  Our  Father 
which  art  in  heaven  .  .  .  give  us  this  clay 
our  daily  bread,"  upon  my  lips,  what  shall  be 
my  own  personal  prayer?  Shall  it  not  be 
this,  or  something  like  this  ? 

Oh,  my  Father,  from  whom  all  fatherhood  in 
heaven  and  earth  is  named,  may  my  prayer  for 
daily  bread  pass  upward,  and  be  transfigured, 
and  become  a  prayer  for  that  Bread  from 
heaven  which  is  Christ  Himself,  broken  for 
humanity  and  given  evermore  for  the  life  of 
the  world.  Thou  who  hast  knit  together  thy 
children  in  one  communion  and  fellowship  in 
that  mystical  Body,  and  hast  made  us  all  par- 
takers of  that  one  Bread,  members  of  that  one 
Body,  grant  to  me  the  spirit  of  that  Body, 
help  me  to  carry  that  spirit  not  only  into  all 
the  daily  transactions  of  my  own  secular  call- 
ing, but  also,  as  far  as  my  personal  influence 
extends,  to  create  and  strengthen  such  an 
enlightened  and  active  public  opinion,  in 
regard  to  all  social  and  industrial  problems, 
as  shall  tend  to  promote  a  more  active  spirit 
of  social  service  as  a  part  of  Christian  duty, 
as  shall  tend  to  permeate  economic  and  in- 
dustrial life  with  the  regulative  spirit  of  applied 
Christianity ;  and  that  the  Passion  of  Thy  Son 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  71 

may  be  verified,  and  the  law  of  His  Incarna- 
tion— from  men  to  men — may  be  utilized,  help 
me  to  fulfil  more  consistently  my  membership 
in  the  Church,  as  the  storehouse  of  Christ's 
redemptive  manhood,  as  the  witnessing  body 
to  the  all-sufiiciency  of  His  Divine  and  in- 
carnate grace  to  solve  all  the  problems  of 
human  society,  to  the  transforming,  enlighten- 
ing, cjuickening  power  of  His  Holy  Spirit  upon 
all  human  character  and  life. 

And  to  pray  this  petition  in  that  spirit 
would  be  surely  to  pray  the  Lord's  Prayer 
aright. 

But  to  pray  in  that  spirit  would  be  to  work 
in  that  spirit  also,  for,  as  Lord  Tennyson  said 
in  his  last  poem — 

"  To  pray,  to  do  : 
To  pray,  to  do  according  to  the  prayer, 
Are  both  to  worship  Allah  :  but  the  prayers 
That  have  no  successor  in  deed  are  faint 
And  pale  in  Allah's  eyes ;  fair  mothers  they 
Dying  in  childbirth  of  dead  sons." 

And  to  pray  this  petition  aright  is  to  recognize 
that  the  special  call  of  Christ  to  the  present 
age  is  a  call  to  Social  Service,  it  would  be 
to  acknowledge  that  the  Mission  of  Christ's 
Church  in  this  closing  year  of  the  century, 
whatever  else  it  may  be,  and  it  is  of  course 
much  else,  is  a  Social  Mission. 


72       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORd's    PRAYER 

And  if  you  ask  me — and  I  am  speaking 
now  of  course  to  the  junior  members  of  the 
University — how,  as  individuals,  you  shall 
obey  Christ's  call,  you  shall  help  to  fulfil  this 
mission,  I  will  say  to  you  : — 

1.  In  the  first  place,  while  you  are  in  this 
University,  study  these  industrial  and  social 
problems  carefully  and  scientifically  in  your 
economic  text-books,  and  with  the  methods 
you  learn  in  your  economic  class-rooms,  but 
study  them  also  in  the  light  of  the  Law  of  the 
Incarnation — that  God's  way  out  to  men  is 
from  men  to  men — and  you  will  come  to  see, 
I  doubt  not,  that  in  all  economic  problems, 
in  the  last  resort,  the  question  is  not  about 
wealth,  but  about  men  ;  and  you  will  begin  to 
wonder  whether  after  all  human  nature  is  so 
changed  or  sunk,  that  spiritual  forces  may  not 
once  more  outdo  the  miracles  of  chemistry  and 
mechanics,  or  forethought  and  faith  prove 
themselves  even  stronger  than  electricity  and 
eas  in  mouldino^  the  social  destinies  of  man. 

2.  And  then,  when  you  go  out  from  this 
place  of  learning,  "furnished  completely  unto 
every  good  work,"  be  determined  that  you  will 
carry  with  you  into  the  daily  practice  of  life, 
not  only  your  science  and  your  learning,  but 
your  faith.     If  you  are  an  employer  of  labour, 


SOCIAL    JUSTICE  73 

take  care  in  the  first  place — my  own  parochial 
experience  leads  me  to  say  in  the  first  place — 
take  care  that  your  Christian  philanthropy 
grows  naturally  out  of  the  management  of 
your  own  business,  that  is  to  say,  if  you  are 
a  ship-owner,  see  that  your  first  efi'orts  at  social 
service,  social  reform,  are  on  behalf  of  your 
own  seamen ;  if  a  coal- owner  or  iron-master, 
on  behalf  of  your  own  miners ;  if  a  cotton- 
spinner,  on  behalf  of  your  own  factory  hands  ; 
if  a  cotton-broker  or  merchant,  on  behalf  of 
your  own  clerks,  or  porters,  or  labourers.  Look 
to  the  lives  of  your  own  workmen  first  of  all. 
Let  your  name  by  all  means  appear  as  fre- 
quently as  it  ought  in  the  subscri^^tion  lists  of 
the  great  public  charities  of  your  city  or  neigh- 
bourhood, but  do  not  leave  it  for  the  revela- 
tions connected,  say,  with  your  candidature  of 
some  contested  city  election,  to  discover  that 
your  charity  has  not  begun  at  home,  in  kindly 
human  relationship,  direct  and  personal,  with 
your  own  work-people.  Care,  T  say,  first  of 
all,  for  the  lives  of  the  men  in  your  own 
employment.  And.  when  sometimes,  perhaps 
on  Sunday  in  church,  you  hear  the  words 
telling  how  Christ  came  that  men  "  might 
have  life,  and  have  it  more  abundantly,"  and 
you  consider  that  for  yourself,  no  less  than  for 


74       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

your  men,  life  means  something  more  than 
livelihood,  means  joy,  means  art,  means  com- 
radeship, do  not  forget  that  for  your  men,  even 
more  than  for  yourself,  life  does  mean  liveli- 
hood, that  where  livelihood  is  not  adequate, 
life  not  only  begins— as  to  the  last  of  time 
with  most  men  it  must  begin — in  livelihood, 
but  that  it  ends  there.  And  if  such  thoughts 
of  the  true  meaning  of  the  adequacy  of  both 
life  and  livelihood,  of  wealth  and  well-being, 
should  lead  you  to  consider  also  St.  Paul's 
doctrine  about  "the  labourer  who  worketh 
being  first  partaker  of  the  fruits,"  and  to 
wonder  whether,  after  all,  in  a  right  system  of 
economics,  it  may  not  be  true  that  the  living 
wage  should  be  the  bed-rock  of  price,  the  first 
charge  on  the  product  of  work,  and  whether 
therefore,  in  a  Christian  system  of  trade,  some 
way  ought  not  to  be  found  for  prices  to  follow 
wages,  rather  than  wages  prices,  [  should  not, 
if  I  were  you,  greatly  care  if  men  call  you 
Socialist,  for  it  is  not,  remember,  the  Socialism 
which  comes  to  a  rich  man  because  he  is  a 
Christian  that  is  dangerous;  it  is  the  Socialism 
which  comes  to  a  poor  man  because  other 
people  have  ceased  to  be  Christians  which  is 
dangerous. 

3.  Again,  if  it  should  happen — as  in  this 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  75 

congregation  it  well  may  happen — that  your 
lives  in  the  future  shall  be  cast,  not  amid  the 
great  cities  of  England,  but  among  the  country 
villages,  then  I  say  that  upon  you  and  upon 
such  as  you  very  largely  lies  the  responsibility 
for  the  future  happiness  and  stability  of  your 
country.  For  no  one,  I  am  sure,  can  have 
thought  seriously  upon  social  questions  with- 
out feeling  that  the  true  key  to  the  solution 
of  the  city  problem  lies  in  the  village.  You 
must  have  often  heard  how  one  of  the  great 
difficulties  in  connection  with  the  surplus  of 
the  workers  in  the  town  arises  from  the  steady 
influx  of  the  rural  laljourer,  attracted  not  only 
by  the  larger  wages,  but  by  the  larger  life  of 
the  city.  The  problem  for  you,  as  a  possible 
country  squire  in  the  future,  to  solve  is  how 
to  make  English  village  life  more  attractive, 
village  citizenship  more  honourable,  how  to 
break  the  monotony  and  commonplace  with 
some  stimulant  which  shall  not  be  vicious, 
with  some  pleasure  which  shall  not  be  merely 
gross  and  sensual,  how  to  quicken  citizenship 
and  local  patriotism  with  noble  aims  of  good- 
ness and  wholesomeness  and  righteousness. 
And  believe  me,  you  will  find  no  better  way 
of  doing  that  than  by  making  evident  in  your 
leadership,   your  own   personal   faith   in    the 


76      SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORd's    PRAYER 

royalty  of  Christ  and  the  ultimate  authority 
of  His  law  in  the  realm  of  villag-e  ethics, 
village  economics,  village  politics.  For  most 
certainly  it  is  that  Faith  which  will  best  create 
in  the  citizen  that  true  sense  of  individual 
responsibility,  strengthening  him  to  resist  the 
tyranny  of  village  tradition  and  prejudice, 
habituating  him  to  live  for  an  unseen  and 
distant  end,  which  is  so  necessary  both  in  city 
and  village,  to  counterwork  that  impatience 
for  quick  results  and  legislative  short  cuts 
which  is  always  one  of  the  great  dangers  of  a 
democratic  electorate. 

4.  And  if  some  of  you  are  called  to  be 
country  parsons,  as  others  are  called  to  be 
country  squires,  to  them  I  would  say,  if  I 
may  pass  on  the  advice  that  was  once  given 
to  a  country  parson  by  one  of  the  noblest 
country  gentlemen  of  our  generation,  who 
was  himself  I  think  quoting  Charles  Kingsley 
— "  Above  all  do  not  let  your  people  discover 
where  the  man  leaves  off  and  the  parson 
begins."  And  that  advice  I  take  it  means, 
not  that  you  are  to  distinguish  between  the 
secular  and  the  spiritual,  in  order  that  you 
may  make  the  parson  as  much  secular  as 
possible,  but  that  you  are  to  recognize  in  your 
practice  and  in  your  teaching  that  Life  is  one 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  ^7 

and  that  man  is  one.  That  Life  is  one — that 
you  have  no  right  to  say  to  your  people 
social  life,  industrial  life,  civic  life  is  one 
thing,  and  spiritual  life,  religious  life,  quite 
another;  and  Man  is  one — you  cannot  dis- 
member his  soul,  and  divide  it  in  halves,  and 
so  contrive  that  part  of  it  shall  be  kept 
for  secular  work  and  part  for  religious  work, 
that  one  half  shall  be  used  when  he  is  buy- 
ing and  selling  on  a  week-day,  and  the  other 
half  when  he  is  praying  and  singing  on  a 
Sunday. 

Least  of  all  must  the  country  parson  cease 
to  believe  in  the  wholeness,  in  the  unity  of 
Life.  Li  the  new  democratic  future,  whether 
in  the  English  city  or  the  English  village,  the 
call  is  for  leadership,  and  for  leaders,  who, 
while  believing  in  the  possibilities  of  democratic 
control,  know  how  essential  to  efficient  admin- 
istration are  all  the  qualities  which  go  to 
make  up  the  ideal  Christian  character — justice, 
patience,  hopefulness,  modesty,  integrity, 
frankness,   fellowship. 

We  need  clergy,  therefore,  who  will  insist 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Church,  as  an  inter- 
preter of  life,  as  a  preacher  of  Christ's  king- 
dom on  earth,  so  to  act,  so  to  speak,  that  every 
citizen  shall  feel  that  it  is  a  point  of  honour 


78       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF   THE   LORD's   PRAYER 

and  of  Christian  obligation  to  build  up,  as  far 
as  his  influence  extends,  the  life  of  the  civic 
brotherhood  to  which  lie  belongs,  and  every 
sphere  of  action  which  it  contains,  in  justice, 
righteousness,  and  the  fear  of  God. 

And  yet,  while  I  most  earnestly  counsel 
those  of  you  w^ho  may  be  country  parsons  in 
the  future  not  to  separate  yourselves  from  the 
civic  life  and  the  social  enthusiasms,  perhaps 
even  the  political  ideals  of  your  parishioners, 
I  do  counsel  you  most  earnestly  to  beware  of 
the  danger  of  secularizing  your  ofiice.  It  is,  I 
fear,  in  these  days  a  very  real  danger,  especially 
to  the  younger  clergy,  partly  from  the  always 
powerful  spirit  of  worldliness,  and  partly  also 
as  a  reaction  against  a  somewhat  seminarist 
type  of  priestliness,  which  seems  to  be  growing 
wp  amongst  us. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  the  old  Scotch 
Presbyterian  divine.  Dr.  Leighton,  that  on 
one  occasion  he  was  publicly  reprimanded  by 
his  synod  for  not  "  preaching  for  the  times." 
He  inquired  from  them  who  was  in  the  habit 
of  doing  so  ?  "  All  the  brethren,"  they 
replied.  "  Then,"  he  said,  "  if  all  of  you  preach 
for  the  times,  you  may  surely  allow  one  poor 
brother  to  preach  for  Christ  and  eternity." 

My  friends,  I  know  not  whether  the  story 


SOCIAL   JUSTICE  79 

is  true  or  not.  But  the  lesson  of  it  for  us 
seems  to  be  true,  and  it  is  this.  The  Church 
demands  from  every  one  of  her  ministers  that 
he  should  "  preach  for  the  times,"  but  only  on 
the  condition  that  the  preacher  himself  has 
first  striven  to  bring  his  own  life,  every  day 
and  every  hour  of  it,  into  the  presence  of 
Christ  and  under  the  light  of  His  eternity, 
and  for  the  rest  has  learnt  to  feel — 

"  That  God  and  Heaven's  great  deeps  are  nearer 

Him  to  whose  heart  his  fellow-man  is  nigh ; 
Who  does  not  hold  his  soul's  own  freedom  dearer 

Than  that  of  all  his  brethren  low  or  high  ; 
Who  to  the  right  can  feel  himself  the  truer 

For  being  gently  patient  with  the  wrong ; 
Who  sees  a  brother  in  the  evil-doer, 

And  finds  in  love  the  heart's  blood  of  his  song." 


IV 

SOCIAL    DUTY 

St.  Matt.  vi.  12,  13  :  ^'Our  Father  .  .  .  for- 
give us  our  trespasses,  as  we  forgive  them  that 
trespass  against  us :  and  lead  us  not  into 
temptation,  but  deliver  us  from  evil." 

"  Oratio  Dominica,"  says  St.  Augustine, 
"  forma  est  desideriorum."  The  Paternoster 
is  the  mould  of  prayer  into  which  we  are 
to  cast  all  our  needs.  There  is  no  necessity 
to  go  beyond  it,  for  it  is  normal  for  all  other 
prayers.  There  is  not,  he  affirms,  any  possible 
request  that  a  faithful  man  ought  to  make, 
which  cannot  be  brought  under  one  or  other 
clause  of  this  prayer,  which  is  not  an  unfolding 
of  something  which  is  shut  up  in  it.  It  is 
only  such  a  prayer  as  ought  never  to  be 
prayed,  something  that  *'  we  ask  amiss,"  which 
will  not  range  itself  under  one  or  other  of  its 
petitions.^ 

1  *' Nihil    invenies  quod  in   ista  Dominica    non  con- 
tineatur  et  concludatur  oratione." — E]).  cxxx.  12. 

80 


SOCIAL    DUTY  81 

In   the   three  sermons   which,  at    intervals 
during  my   term    of   office,  it   has    been    my 
privilege    to    preach    in    this    place,    I    have 
endeavoured  to  apply  St.  Augustine's  principle 
of  exegesis.     I  have  asked  you,   on  the   one 
hand,   to    find    shut    up,   as    it    were,    in    the 
petitions  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  certain  prin- 
ciples of  social  action  which  seemed  to  me  to 
characterize    God's    good   government    of  the 
world ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  I  have  asked 
you  to  appraise  the  value  of  certain  of   our 
own  social  hopes  and  aspirations  in  regard  to 
the  future  of  humanity  by  seeing  how  far  they 
will  bear  the  test  of  being  prayed,  of  being 
cast    into    the    mould   of  the  Lord's    Prayer. 
Social  order,   social  progress,  social  justice — 
these  have  been  the  subjects  of  our  thought 
hitherto. 

In  my  first  sermon  I  spoke  of  the  principle 
of  Social  Order. 

The  Fatherly  will  of  God  as  the  only  true 
basis  of  human  society,  as  the  only  ground  for 
a  rational  faith  that  social  evolution  is  true  ; 
that  evolution  is  the  way  that  God  makes 
things  come  to  pass;  that  the  history  of 
humanity  has  a  definite  moral  goal ;  that  there 
is  no  iDlace  in  God's  plan  for  the  world  for  any 
permanent    force   which    is   out  of  sympathy 


82       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

with  human  progress ;  that  the  Christian  doc- 
trine of  the  inherent  dignity  of  "  the  soul "  of 
man  gave  birth  to  the  idea  of  personality,  and 
personality  involving  freedom;  that  individual 
freedom  ujDon  which  personal  and  social  re- 
sponsibility can  alone  rest,  is  further  guaran- 
teed by  the  conception  of  a  fatherly  Creator ; 
that  there  is  therefore  a  fixed  objective  point 
towards  which  society  is  being  guided  by  God, 
and  a  consequent  prescribed  duty  for  society 
to  fulfil — in  other  words,  that  there  is  an  order 
of  society  which  is  the  best,  and  that  towards 
this  order  man  is  gradually  being  led  accord- 
ing to  a  definite  Divine  plan — all  this  we 
thought  we  found  implied  in  the  first  clauses 
of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  "Our  Father  which  art 
in  Heaven,  Thy  will  be  done,  as  in  Heaven,  so 
in  earth." 

In  my  second  sermon  I  dwelt  upon  the 
principle  of  Social  Progress.  That  the  idea 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  gives  birth  to  Social 
Optimism  ;  that  the  belief  in  the  Keign  of 
Christ  here  and  now  is  the  source  of  every 
true  Christian's  militant  certitude,  for  which 
history  too  he  thinks  gives  warrant,  of  the 
ultimate  establishment  upon  earth  of  an  ideal 
social  state,  natural  and  to  be  naturally 
evolved ;  that  human  life  is  therefore  rightly 


SOCIAL    DUTY  83 

regarded  as  a  great  educational  plan  working 
itself  out  according  to  the  design  of  God  ;  that 
in    the  jDrogressive  realization  of  the   Divine 
idea  of  human  perfectibility  a  conception  of 
social    duty  as  well    as    of  personal    duty  is 
evolved,  in    other  words,   that  society   exists 
quite    as    much    to   create    new    duties    as  to 
insure   old  rights;    that  in   the  fulfilment  of 
this  twofold  obligation,  personal  and  social,  it 
is  man's  duty  to  study  the  providential  laws 
by  which  humanity  has  been  impelled  along 
the  path  of  social  order  and  progress,  and  to 
co-operate,  as  fiiv  as  he  can,  with  those  laws,  in 
order  that  in  human  society  this  double  mani- 
festation  of  progress  may  be  seen — all   men 
approximating  to  a  common  levels  but  a  level 
which  is  continually  rising — all  this  we  thought 
we  found  revealed  or  implied    in  the  second 
clause    of   the    Paternoster,   "  Father  .   .  Thy 
kingdom  come  ...  in  earth." 

In  my  third  sermon,  on  the  first  Sunday  of 
this  term,  I  spoke  of  Social  Justice. 

And  in  that  petition  of  the  prayer  in  which 
we  pray  that  "our  daily  Bread  may  be  given  to 
us  day  by  day,"  I  thought  we  found,  in  the 
fact  that  the  daily  bread  is  stated  to  be  a 
gift  from  God,  God's  bread,  not  devil's 
bread,  bread  therefore  to  be  legitimately  earned 


84       SOCIAL   TEACHING   OF   THE    LORD's   PRAYER 

before  it  can  be  said  to  be  honestly  owned, 
the  social  principle  implied  that  all  service  is 
honourable  and  all  idleness  a  disgrace ;  that 
no  wealth  is  legitimately  earned  which  is  not 
an  exchange  value  for  actual  services  rendered, 
services  which  minister  to  life  and  help  on  the 
common  good  ;  that  to  get  money  by  whatever 
strategy,  by  the  gambling  method  of  Turf  or 
Stock  Exchange,  without  furnishing  an  equiva- 
lent, is  dishonourable  spoliation  ;  that  private 
property  exists  for  the  sake  of  society,  not 
society  for  the  sake  of  private  property ;  that 
wealth  is  a  trust,  and  that  men  are  to  be 
measured  not  by  what  they  possess,  but  by 
the  use  they  make  of  their  possessions ;  that 
luxury  can  only  justifiably  come  into  existence 
when  honest  penury  has  vanished,  for  luxury 
only  then  ceases  to  be  culpable  when  it  serves 
to  make  a  man  a  more  careful,  a  more  loving, 
a  more  helpful  member  of  the  community ; 
that  life  means  more  than  livelihood  ;  that 
things  are  for  men  and  not  men  for  things ; 
that  any  industrial  system  which  grinds  up 
men  and  women  to  make  cheap  goods  is  an 
un-Christian  system  ;  that  no  industrial  system 
can  be  a  Christian  system  which  is  not  so 
organized  that  every  honest  and  willing  worker 
can  find  w^ork,  and  work  so  remunerative  that 


SOCIAL    DVTY  85 

not  only  can  lie  maintain  his  own  working 
powers  in  health  and  efficiency,  but  also  is  able 
to  give  to  his  cliildren  a  decent,  a  joyous,  and 
a  reasonable  life  according  to  the  standard  of 
comfort  of  his  class. 

To-day  we  come  to  the  last  clauses  of  the 
Prayer : — 

"Forgive  us  our  trespasses,  as  we  forgive 
them  that  trespass  against  us  :  and  lead  us 
not  into  temptation,  but  deliver  us  from  evil." 

What  is  the  social  message  of  these  words  ? 

*' Forgive  us  our  trespasses,  as  we  forgive 
them  that  trespass  against  us:"  so  at  least 
runs  the  chiuse  in  the  familiar  words  of  the 
Prayer-Book  version — the  version  adopted,  I 
fancy,  by  all  English  Christians,  Nonconformist 
as  well  as  Churchmen.  But,  as  you  are  well 
aware,  the  words  do  not  run  so  either  in  the 
Authorised  or  the  PiCvised  Version  of  St. 
Matthew  or  St.  Luke.  "  Forgive  us  our  debts, 
as  w^e  also  have  forgiven  our  debtors,"  are  St. 
Matthew's  wwds.  '*  Forgive  us  our  sins,  for 
we  ourselves  also  forgive  every  one  that  is 
indebted  to  us,"  are  St.  Luke's. 

There  are  special  lessons  no  doubt — there 
always  are— to  be  learnt  from  a  careful 
exegesis  of  the  varying  words  used  in  trans- 
lation of    the    Greek    equivalents   for    "sin," 


86      SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF   THE    LORD  S   PRAYER 

''  debt,"  "  trespass,"  but  a  consideration  of 
the  Syriac  texts,  both  old  and  Vulgate,  as 
representing  most  nearly  the  original  Aramaic, 
seems  to  leave  little  doubt  that  in  St.  Matthew's 
word  translated  "debt"  we  have  the  most 
accurate  reproduction  of  the  original. 

There  is  certainly  no  need,  for  our  special 
purpose  to-day,  to  go  beyond  that  word. 
There  could  not  well  be  a  better  text  for  a 
sermon  on  Social  Duty  than  this  petition, 
''  Forgive  us  our  debts."  "  Debt "  and  ''  duty," 
moreover,  are  practically  the  same  word,  being 
but  Middle-English  variants  of  the  Latin 
"  dehita,''  a  sum  which  is  due,  a  duty,  a  debt. 

This  petition  then  of  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
"  Forgive  us  our  debts,"  we  may  quite  fairly 
for  our  purpose  to-day  translate — "  Forgive  us, 
0  God,  our  failures  in  social  duty !  " 

Social  duty — ah  !  my  friends,  when  in  the 
light  of  Christ's  Incarnation  we  bring  ourselves 
face  to  face  with  the  great  social  problems  of 
our  age  and  country,  does  not  this  petition  of 
the  Lord's  Prayer — so  read — touch  our  con- 
sciences ?  When,  on  the  one  hand,  we  consider 
the  ideals  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  "the  splendid 
having  and  royal  hope,"  the  zeal  for  souls,  the 
sympathy  for  bodily  needs,  which  are  the 
undivided  fruits    of  a   single   love,  exhibited 


SOCIAL    DUTY  87 

in  the  one  blessed  life  of  Jesus,  to  be  reflected 
in  His  Church,  as  witnessing  for  Him,  as 
re23resenting  Him  in  this  present  world,  as 
occupied  with  His  work  of  setting  up  the 
kinordom  of  God  under  and  amidst  the  natural 
every-day  conditions  of  human  life ;  and  on 
the  other,  when  we  consider  the  Babel  life  of 
our  great  cities,  that  black  cloud  of  pauperism 
brooding  over  the  richest  of  the  countries  of 
the  earth,  of  drunkenness,  with  all  its  foul 
brood  of  folly  and  sensuality  and  crime,  of 
social  revolt,  of  the  almost  standing  feud 
between  capital  and  labour,  of  endemic  misery 
and  avoidable  disease,  of  all  the  countless  ills 
which  make  up  the  terrible  inheritance  of 
ancestral  error,  of  our  social  heredity  and 
environment — when  we  think  of  these  things, 
what  a  sorry  compromise,  what  a  miserable 
evasion,  what  a  vast  conspiracy  to  be  blind, 
does  not  even  the  best  side  of  our  Christian 
civilization  in  England  to-day  seem  ?  Or  again, 
when,  in  the  ethical  realm  of  life  values,  we 
consider  the  office  of  the  Church  of  Christ,  in 
regard  to  the  greatest  of  her  social  duties,  the 
formation  and  building  up  of  human  character, 
and  the  provision  of  the  civic  securities  of 
character  in  a  candid,  enlightened,  vigorous 
public  conscience,  and   we  compare   the  ideal 


88       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF   THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

citizen  of  tlie  kingdom,  as  revealed  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  as  set  forth  for  us  in 
the  apostolic  writings,  with  its  measure  in  the 
stature  of  the  fullness  of  Christ,  thinking  first 
of  all  of  whatsoever  things  are  lovely,  pure, 
just,  noble,  and  of  good  report,  with  the  actual 
result  as  seen,  I  do  not  say,  in  the  exceptional 
saintly  characters  of  Christendom,  but  as  seen 
in  the  unit  of  citizen  life  as  we  know  him 
to-day,  the  common  man  of  the  road,  the  street, 
the  workshop,  the  field,  the  downmost  man 
among  the  rudest,  homeliest  life  of  the  people 
— a  French  peasant,  an  English  agricultural 
labourer — surely  the  mind  must  indeed  be 
dull,  putting  these  two  types  side  by  side, 
which  is  not  conscious  of  the  depth  of  contrast. 
Many  of  you  are,  no  doubt,  familiar  with 
Jean  Frangois  Millet's  picture  of  ''The  Man 
with  the  Hoe."  Some  of  you  perhaps  may 
know  the  fine  interpretation  of  that  picture  by 
a  modern  Californian  poet — 

''Bowed  by  the  weight  of  centuries,  he  leans 
Upon  his  hoe  and  gazes  on  the  ground, 
The  emptiness  of  ages  in  his  face, 
And  on  his  back  the  burden  of  the  world. 
Who  made  him  dead  to  rapture  and  despair, 
A  thing  that  grieves  not  and  that  never  hopes, 
Stolid  and  stunned,  a  brother  to  the  ox  1 
Who  loosened  and  let  down  this  brutal  jaw  ? 
Whose  was  the  hand  that  slanted  back  this  brow 


SOCIAL   DUTY  89 

Whose  breath  blew  out  the  light  within  this  brain  1 

Is  this  the  thing  the  Lord  God  made  and  gave 

To  have  dominion  over  sea  and  land ; 

To  trace  the  stars  and  search  the  heavens  for  power ; 

To  feel  the  passion  of  eternity  ? 

Through  this  dread  shape  the  suffering  ages  look ; 

Time's  tragedy  is  in  that  aching  stoop ; 

Through  this  dread  shape  humanity,  betrayed, 

Plundered,  profaned  and  disinherited, 

Cries  protest  to  the  Judges  of  the  world, 

A  protest  that  is  also  prophecy. 

O  masters,  lords,  and  rulers  in  all  lands, 

Is  this  the  handiwork  you  give  to  God, 

This  monstrous  thing  distorted  and  soul-quenched  1 

How  will  you  ever  straighten  up  this  shape ; 

Touch  it  again  with  immortality ; 

Give  back  the  upward  looking  and  the  light ; 

Rebuild  in  it  the  music  and  the  dream ; 

Make  right  the  immemorial  infamies, 

Perfidious  wi^ongs,  immedicable  woes?" 

All,  but  perhaps  you  say  this  is  but  the 
exaggerated  note,  the  hysteric  scream  of  a 
Socialist  Poet ! 

Well,  then,  take  this  very  prosaic  statement 
of  fact,  made  in  Parliament  three  weeks  ago, 
by  a  speaker  whom  no  one  will  accuse  of  being 
either  Socialist  or  Poet.  It  is  a  bald  description 
of  the  provision  made  to-day  in  the  capital  of 
Christendom  for  the  housing  of  English  citizens, 
who,  however  huml)le  they  may  be,  have  still 
the  right  to  claim  suffrage  in  the  kingdom  of 
God,  have  still,  so  at  least  we  declare  in  our 


90      SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF   THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

Christian  creeds,  the  possibility  of  highest  man- 
hood pent  up  in  their  souls,  the  splendid  estate 
of  God-likeness  held  in  fee. 

"The  medical  officer  of  the  London  County 
Council  showed,  that  in  London  alone  four 
hundred  thousand  persons  were  living  in  one- 
roomed  houses,  thirty  thousand  were  living 
six  ill  a  room,  nine  thousand  seven  in  a  room, 
three  thousand  eight  in  a  room.  The  medical 
officer,  even  for  the  aristocratic  district  of 
Kensington,  reported  a  case  where  five  adult 
women  slept  in  one  room — three  in  one  bed, 
two  under  it.  Li  Camberwell  seventeen  were 
found  living  and  sleeping  in  a  single  room.  Li 
some  cases  two  families  lived  in  one  room,  with 
a  partition  of  sacking.  In  the  East  end  things 
were  worse,  and  beds  were  let  out  on  the  eight 
hours'  system  to  night  and  day  workers  in 
turn.  .  .  Moreover,  crowding  means  unnecessary 
deaths.  The  averag;e  death-rate  for  London  to- 
day  is  seventeen.  But  that  average  rate  is 
made  up  from  the  total  of  different  districts 
which  allows  such  individual  differences  as 
these — St.  George's  in  the  West,  Hanover 
Square,  thirteen ;  St.  George's,  Southwark, 
twenty-three;  St.George's-in-the-East,  twenty- 


six." 


My  friends,  these  are  significant  figures,  and. 


SOCIAL  DUTY  91 

alas !  it  is  not  difficult  to  find  corresponding 
figures  in  other  great  towns.  In  Glasgow,  for 
example,  one  hundred  thousand,  or  about  one- 
fifth  of  the  total  population,  are  living  in  single 
rooms,  and  the  average  death-rate  is  cor- 
respondingly high. 

In  the  rural  districts  of  Eno^land  the  housino; 
question  is  hardly  less  scandalous,  although 
the  cottage  question  in  the  English  village  is 
a  very  old  and  a  very  stale  one  indeed. 

More  than  twenty  years  ago  I  remember  that, 
at  a  conference  on  village  life  held  in  Oxford, 
speaking  from  my  experience  as  a  country 
parson  in  this  diocese,  and  bringing  forward 
certain  vital  statistics  with  regard  to  village 
homes  in  Buckinghamshire,  I  asked  these  ques- 
tions— "  How  is  it  possible,  under  such  physical 
conditions  as  I  have  described,  to  expect  from 
my  parishioners  any  approach  to  that  *  pure 
relicrion  breathing;  household  laws'  which 
it  is  yet  my  duty  as  a  parish  priest  to  in- 
culcate ?  How,  with  such  huts  for  homes,  can 
the  distinctively  home  virtues,  parental  love, 
filial  obedience,  household  thrift,  cleanliness, 
modesty,  chastity,  self-respect,  purity  and 
simplicity  of  heart,  find  any  room  for  growth  ? 
Can  I  honestly  ascribe  the  meagre  growth  of 
these  virtues  among  my  people  solely  to  failure 


92       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LOED  S    PRAYER 

of  individual  will,  or  must  I  not  rather  trace  it 
to  circumstances  of  life  and  sleep  so  degrading 
as  to  leave  no  moral  room  for  their  growth  ? 
What  provision  can  there  be  under  such 
conditions  of  home  life,  not  only  for  the  three 
essentials  of  physical  life — pure  air,  pure  water, 
pure  food — but  also  for  the  three  essentials  of 
spiritual  life — '  admiration,  hope,  and  love '  ?  " 

Well,  but,  my  friends,  after  twenty  years 
the  conditions  to-day  are  very  little  improved. 
I  might  quote  many  pieces  of  evidence  in 
proof  of  this.  Take  this  one  paragraph  only 
from  the  report  of  the  late  Commission  on 
Labour.  This  is  how  Mr.  Little,  the  special 
Agricultural  Commissioner,  officially  sum- 
marizes the  evidence  brought  before  the 
Commission — 

"  There  is  abundant  evidence,"  he  says,  '*  to 
show  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  cottages 
inhabited  by  labourers  are  below  a  proper 
standard  for  decency  and  comfort,  while  a 
considerable  number  of  them  are  vile  and 
deplorably  wretched  dwellings  ...  It  is  im- 
possible to  read  these  reports  without  experi- 
encing a  painful  feeling  that  too  frequently 
and  too  commonly  the  agricultural  labourer 
lives  under  conditions  which  are  physically 
and  morally  unwholesome  and  offensive." 


SOCIAL   DUTY  93 

How,  then,  shall  we  set  about  remedying 
these  existing  evils  so  discreditable  to  our 
civilization  ?  In  the  first  place,  I  think,  we 
are  forced  to  acknowledge  that  some  further 
legislation  is  needed.  In  connection  with  the 
housing  problem  in  the  towns,  at  any  rate,  the 
monopoly  of  the  landowner  ought  in  certain 
directions  to  be  further  restricted;  the  principle 
of  betterment  should  be  more  widely  extended; 
something  should  be  done  to  prevent  the  whole 
increase  of  land  values,  caused  by  the  growth 
of  population,  merely  going  to  the  enrichment 
of  individuals ;  eligible  building  sites  ought 
not  to  be  kept  out  of  public  use  that  that 
enrichment  may  be  the  greater.  Still  it  is 
not  only,  or  chiefly,  fresh  legislation  that  we 
need.  It  is  not  only  the  law  that  is  to  blame. 
Compulsory  powers  of  the  amplest  description 
are  given  to  the  local  authorities,  and  if  they 
were  used  to  their  fullest  extent  the  position 
of  the  working  classes  as  regards  their  housing 
might  be  very  different  indeed  from  what 
it  is. 

What  then  is  wrong  ?  The  motive  force  in 
an  enlightened  public  opinion,  in.  the  various 
localities,  to  set  these  Acts  in  motion  is  too 
often  absent. 

Here,  then,  lies  an  obvious  duty,  social  duty, 


94       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF    THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

of  the  Christiaii  community,  of  the  Church.  If 
it  is  true,  as  surely  it  is,  that  the  Christian 
community  as  a  whole  is  morally  responsible 
for  the  character  of  its  own  economic  and  social 
order,  and  for  deciding  to  what  extent  matters 
affecting  that  order  are  to  be  left  either  to 
individual  initiative,  or  to  the  official  adminis- 
tration of  the  civil  power,  or  to  the  unregu- 
lated play  of  economic  forces,  then  it  is  for 
the  Church  an  occasion  so  to  waken  and  to 
foster  the  public  conscience,  the  Christian 
conscience  of  the  community,  as  shall  secure 
the  best  administration  of  particular  systems 
while  they  exist,  and  the  modification  or 
change  of  them  when  this  is  required  by  the 
progress  of  knowledge,  thought  and  life.  And 
as,  in  this  case  before  us  of  the  housing  of  the 
people,  the  health-right  of  the  working  classes, 
and  the  fair  and  sanitary  conditions  of  their 
working  life,  is  so  directly  involved,  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  it  is  the  direct  duty  of 
the  Church,  as  a  matter  of  practical  religion, 
to  create  and  foster  such  a  public  opinion  as 
shall  overcome  the  supineness,  the  ignorance, 
the  apathy,  the  sluggish  indifference  of  the 
existing  civic  authorities  in  town  and  country. 
When  one  remembers,  on  the  one  hand,  that 
immense  army  of  human  beings — it  far  ex- 


SOCIAL    DUTY  95 

ceeds  in  its  total  the  numbers  of  our  killed 
and  wounded  in  the  South  African  War — 
annually  stricken  down  by  preventible  disease, 
in  plain  words,  slain  either  by  culpable  care- 
lessness or  by  ignorance,  scarcely  if  at  all 
less  culpable ;  and  when  one  remembers,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  immense  engine  of  influ- 
ence which  the  Church  might  bring  to  bear 
upon  the  public  conscience  of  the  community, 
it  does  indeed  seem  lamentable  that  there 
should  be  any  hesitation  to  embark  in  the 
great  work,  not  only  of  denouncing  that  care- 
lessness, but  also  of  instructing  that  ignorance. 
To  any  man  who  believes,  as  I  do  most 
firmly,  that  the  body  of  man  is  not  only  the 
shrine  which  contains  the  soul,  but  a  shrine 
which,  under  certain  conditions,  fashions  and 
modifies  the  soul  itself,  there  can  surely  appear 
no  task  more  noble,  no  aim  more  worthy  of 
the  energies  of  any  Church  or  Christian  com- 
munity than  that  of  securing  for  the  industrial 
workers  of  the  nation  those  fair  and  healthy 
conditions  of  home-life  and  work,  which  lead 
to  happy,  useful,  and  untrammelled  lives,  and 
removing  those  evil  conditions  of  ignorance 
and  squalor  and  disease  which  are  among  the 
chief  obstacles  at  present  in  the  way  of  man's 
attainment  to  that  fullness  and  perfection  of 


96       SOCIAL    TEACHING    OF   THE    LORD's    PRAYER 

moral  stature  which  is  the  true  height  of  his 
destiny. 

And  certainly,  my  friends,  it  is  only  in  so 
far  as  you  and  I  have  this  faith,  it  is  only  in 
so  far  as  you  and  T  know,  and  act  upon  the 
knowledge,  that  the  public  conscience  never 
can  be  healthy  when  individual  consciences 
are  weak,  that  we  shall  learn  how  to  pray  the 
Lord's  Prayer  aright. 

Let  us  never,  then,  take  this  petition — 
"  Forgive  us  our  sins  " — upon  our  lips,  with- 
out the  determination  that  at  least  some- 
thing like  this  shall  be  included  in  the 
interpretation  of  it  to  our  own  hearts—"  Oh, 
our  Father,  forgive  us  our  social  sins,  for- 
give us  our  failures  in  social  duty,  in  civic 
obligations,  in  the  realization  of  public  respon- 
sibility ;  help  us  to  take  home  to  ourselves  as 
a  matter  of  private  conscience  the  arraign- 
ment of  public  wrong-doing,  of  corporate  irre- 
sponsibility, the  fact  that  too  often  we  do  in 
the  mass  what  no  one  of  us  would  do  as  an 
individual  ;  make  us  to  be  faithful  stewards 
not  only  of  the  personal  gifts  of  light  or  grace, 
but  of  the  manifold  gifts  of  knowledge  and 
civilization ;  help  us,  each  one  of  us,  as  far  as 
our  influence  goes,  in  however  small  a  degree, 
to  build  up  in  the  community  of  which  we  are 


SOCIAL   DUTY  97 

members  a  strong  public  conscience,  which 
shall  be  zealous  for  great  causes,  carrying  in 
them  the  hope  of  future  progress,  and  creating 
that  spirit  of  Christ-like  courage  by  which 
the  kingdom  of  God  shall  one  day  come  upon 
earth,  and  the  goal  of  social  evolution  be 
reached,  when  Christ  shall  reign,  King  of 
kings  and  Lord  of  lords." 

"  Forgive  us  our  trespasses,  as  we  forgive 
them  that  trespass  against  us :  and  lead  us 
not  into  temptation,  but  deliver  us  from  evil." 

I  must  hurry  to  a  conclusion,  and  yet  I 
ought  not  to  close  without  emphasizing  the 
lesson  of  social  warning  which  this  last  clause 
of  the  Prayer  seems  to  contain. 

Every  new  popular  movement  has  its  foolish 
fanatics.  And  the  Christian  Socialist  move- 
ment in  the  English  Church  is,  I  suppose,  not 
free  from  them.  There  are  men  who  speak 
hastily,  and  who  appear  to  think  that  this 
final  petition  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  may  be 
read  in  this  way — "  Deliver  a  man  from  evil 
environment,  and  then  he  cannot  fall  into 
temptation,  but  will  quite  naturally  and 
spontaneously  live  a  good  life." 

I  cannot,  of  course,  pretend  in  the  few 
moments  that  remain  to  us  to  discuss  the 
relations  of  the  laws  of  heredity  and  environ- 
ment to  human    life,    conduct,  belief,   but   it 

H 


98       SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF  THE   LOEd's    PEAYER 

would  be  disingenuous  to  ignore  the  influ- 
ence of  these  two  great  facts  of  human  life 
upon  the  social  aspects  of  our  religion.  No 
intelligent  Christian  who  knows  anything  of 
modern  social  problems  can  sincerely  say, 
"  Deliver  us  from  evil  .  .  .  bring  us  not 
into  temptation."  without  serious  thought  of 
the  evils  of  vital  inheritance,  and  the  special 
temptations  of  bad  and  vicious  environment. 
While,  therefore,  we  cannot  afford  to  ignore 
the  facts  of  life,  or  to  think  that  vice  and 
pauperism  and  crime  will  ever  be  eradicated 
from  society  until  we  have  learnt  to  regard 
them  as  symptoms  of  a  deep  and  deadly  dis- 
ease, the  tendency  to  which  is  remorselessly 
transmitted  from  generation  to  generation, 
and  can  be  helpfully  treated  only  by  a  radical 
and  long-continued  change  of  environment,  yet 
we  must  never  allow  ourselves  to  forget  that, 
after  all,  the  most  potent  influence  on  character 
and  life  is  a  change  of  spiritual  environment, 
is,  in  other  words,  what  as  Christians  we  are 
accustomed  to  call,  the  presence  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  acting  at  the  seat  of  human  will. 

In  the  eternal  world  in  which  our  spirits 
live,  soul  makes  body,  character  creates 
environment,  life,  true  life,  always  works  from 
within  outwards.  That  is  the  truth  which 
you    remember    our    great    English     poetess 


SOCIAL    DUTY  99 

grasped   when   she   said    in   the    well-known 
passage  in  Aurora  Leigh — 

"  I  hold  you  will  not  compass  your  poor  ends 
Of  barley-feeding  and  material  ease, 
Without  a  poet's  individualism 
To  work  your  universal.     It  takes  a  soul 
To  move  a  body  :  it  takes  a  high-souled  man 
To  move  the  masses,  even  to  a  cleaner  stye  : 
It  takes  the  Ideal  to  blow  a  hair's-breadth  off 
The  dust  of  the  Actual.     Ah,  your  Fouriers  failed 
Because  not  poets  enough  to  understand 
That  Life  develops  from  within." 

Yes,  and  where  Fourier  failed  Christ  wins. 
"Life  develops  from  within."  We  need  to 
reiterate  this  doctrine.  The  kinwlom  of  heaven 
is  within  you  first  of  all.  No  change  of  con- 
dition, no  bettering  of  environment  is  sufficient 
to  make  o-ood  men.  No  rearrano:ement  of 
society,  no  social  transformation  is  possible, 
has  ever  been  possible,  or  ever  will  be  possible, 
except  as  the  application  of  a  religious  prin- 
ciple, of  a  moral  development,  of  a  strong  and 
active  common  faith.  And  for  this  reason. 
Men  may  easily  re-make  institutions,  but  they 
do  not  so  easily  re-make  themselves.  It  is 
indeed  a  law  of  social  forms,  of  national 
institutions,  that  they  are  always  expressive 
of  national  character.  That  is  indeed  the 
ground  for  the  common  statement,  the  per- 
fectly true  statement,  that  legislation  which 
is   too  far   in    advance  of  public    opinion    is 


100      SOCIAL  TEACHING   OF  THE  LORDS  PRAYER 

always  futile.  National  institutions  come  into 
existence  bearing  of  necessity  the  impress  of 
national  character ;  they  live  only  so  long  as 
it  supplies  them  with  vitality.  To  change 
institutions  for  the  Letter  we  need  to  change 
men  for  the  better.  And  to  do  this  we  need, 
and  shall  ever  need,  religious  motive.  A  great, 
a  momentous  social  revolution,  it  is  true, 
waits  to  be  accomplished.  But  the  social 
revolution  must  succeed,  not  precede,  a  revolu- 
tion of  thought.  We  might  be  all  quite  safely 
Socialists  to-morrow,  provided  only  we  were 
quite  sincerely  Christians  to-day. 
To  sum  up,  then,  in  conclusion  : — 

I.  To  know  that  Social  Order  is  based  on 
the  Fatherly  will  of  God,  to  know  that  our 
filial  relationship  with  the  Heavenly  Father 
throuoh  Christ  is  the  sjround  for  our  faith 
that  social  evolution  is  true,  that  evolution 
is  the  way  that  God  makes  things  come  to 
pass,  that  there  is  an  order  of  society  which  is 
best,  and  that  towards  this  order  humanity  is 
gradually  being  led  according  to  a  definite 
Divine  plan — this  is  to  be  able  to  pray  the 
Lord's  Prayer  aright. 

II.  To  believe  that  the  present  kinghood  of 
Christ  is  the  ground  of  a  true  optimistic  faith 
in  Social  Progress,  faith  that  here  is  the  king- 
dom, now  is  eternity,  and  that  therefore,  in  the 


SOCIAL    DUTY  101 

idea  of  its  Founder,  the  Church,  the  Christian 
kingdom  had  for  its  object  the  reorganization 
and  restitution  of  society,  no  less  than  the 
salvation  and  deliverance  of  the  individual,  and 
that  in  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ 
the  eternal  principles  of  the  Divine  plan,  the 
laws  of  the  kingdom  of  Heaven  are  revealed — 
this  is  to  be  able  to  pray  the  Lord's  Prayer 
aright. 

III.  To  know  that  Social  Justice  requires 
that  our  daily  bread  should  be  God's  bread, 
given  in  return  for  honest  work,  not  thieves' 
bread,  devil's  bread,  filched  from  our  fellows, 
our  swindled,  cheated  brothers  or  sisters,  to 
know  that  wealth  is  only  legitimately  earned 
when  it  is  the  result  of  services  rendered 
which  minister  to  life  and  help  on  the  common 
good — this  is  to  be  able  to  pray  the  Lord's 
Prayer  aright. 

IV.  To  know  that  the  law  of  Social  Duty,  the 
law  of  Christ's  kingdom,  is  the  law  of  service, 
and  that  that  kingdom  is  to  be  advanced,  not 
only  by  the  conversion  of  individuals,  but  by 
the  gradual  raising  of  social  customs,  by  the 
transforming  of  institutions,  to  cherish  social 
ideals,  to  dream  dreams  and  to  see  visions, 
and  to  hold  fast,  in  spite  of  broken  hopes,  to 
the  faith  that  God  will  bring  life  to  its  perfect 


102    SOCIAL   TEACHING    OF    THE    LORd's    PRAYER 

end  at  last — this  is  to  be  able  to  pray  the 
Lord's  Prayer  aright. 

V.  To  know  that  Heredity  and  Environ- 
ment are  facts  of  human  existence,  but  to 
know  also  that  however  bad  the  vital  inherit- 
ance, it  may  be  modified  and  changed  by  good 
environment,  and  yet  that  the  most  potent  of  all 
influences  upon  human  character  is  change  of 
spiritual  environment ;  to  know  therefore  that 
social  reform  must  begin  first  in  the  sacrifice 
of  self,  and  the  building  up  of  individual 
character ;  that  the  public  conscience  can 
never  be  healthy  where  individual  consciences 
are  weak,  but  to  know  also  that  environment 
counts  for  much ;  and  that  as  all  life  is  of  the 
kingdom  of  God,  the  Church  of  Christ  is 
concerned  in  the  ways  of  His  disciples,  however 
secular  they  may  seem  to  be,  and  must  help 
to  build  up  the  civic  life  of  the  nation,  and  of 
every  sphere  of  action  which  belongs  to  it,  in 
justice,  righteousness,  and  the  fear  of  God — 
this  is  to  be  able  to  pray  the  Lord's  Prayer 
aright. 


THE    END 


Richard  Clay  ifc  Son^,  Limited,  London  tfc  Bungay. 


THE    LAST   WORK 
liY   THE    LATE   BISHOP    OF    WAKEFIELD. 

THE  CLOSED  BOOR.     Instructions  and  Meditations  given 

at  various  Retreats  and  Quiet  Days, 

By  the   Right    Rev.    W.    Walsham    How,   D.D.,  First  Bishop  of 
Wakefield.     Crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  5^. 

oflViriru'rfoorriil'Se™  ct;^^^  "'°  r^  "'?'^s^'^  ^"  p^^'«-'  --^j  it  ;.s  fun 

thoroii-hlvFn„l-  K  Christians,  and  Us  piety  is   thoroughly  genuine  and 

gZZIuI^"^^''^'  '"  "^'""P'^  "^  ''''  ^-^  ^P'-'-^l  lif<^  of  the  Church  o"^  England."- 

enZi'otr'tnt:n'efyTp]?ittf-;rP,'heri'^  ""''  ^'""P^'^  ^^  ^'^  °-"  ^^P-'-»"  -^J 
and  temptationsof  th?;;7oS  ,  fe  L  ;Y:t"th?'.?r'  P""."'"."'  ""^^^^^  '°'  '^e  toils 
such  a  teacher  in  gratefi.l  re.  lembrance  -^nd  h!.  '^l  I  '''^°  ^^"""^  ■"'^™  "^"^^  '^"•'^ 
life  of  any  man  wL  reads  the,    ■t^cr./^.t/'P;^^^^^    ''^  "  consecrating  power  in  the 


OTHER    WORKS  BY   THE  SAME  AUTHOR:- 
THE  BALLAD  OF  THE  CHORISTER  BOY. 

With  Ilkistrations.    Small  4to.    Illustrated  cover,  gilt  edges,  i^,  dd. 

THE  BOY  HERO.     A  Story  founded  on  Fact.     Illustrated 
by  n.  J.  A.  Miles. 

Oblong,  paper  boards,   i..  ^d.  ■   fancy  cloth,   bevelled  boards,  giu 
edges,  2J-.  ^^ 

"A  pathetic  story,  founded  on  fact,  of  a  bov  of  £;;v  Tv,^  x„^-a     .. 

not  Ions  ago  at  BvistA."-S/cc^aior  ^  ...  The  incident  occurred 

"The  illustrations  are  very  well  drawn."— ^^^-^r^^^y  I?eview. 


WORKS  BY  THE  RIGHT  RET.  IV.  WALSH  AM  HOW,  D.D. 

DAILY  FAMILY  PRAYER. 

Fcap.  8vo,  clolh  boards,  is,  6d.  ;  calf  or  morocco,  "js.  6J. 

[ig//i  Edition. 

^^  A  Sixpenny  Edition,  in  large  type,  cloth  boards,  is  now  ready.  This  volume 
will  be  found  most  suitable  for  Parochial  Distribution,  and  is  the  cheapest  book  of 
Family  Prayers  yet  published. 

NOTES  ON  THE  CHURCH  SERVICE. 

Fcap.  8vo,  cloth,  9^/. 

PASTORAL  WORK. 

Fcap.  8vo,  cloth  boards,  2s.  6d  [^th  Edition. 

"There  is  not  a  dull  page  in  '  Lectures  on  Pastoral  Work.'  " — Guar-iiaii. 

PASTOR  IN  PAROCHIA.     With  the  Appendix. 

Fcap.  Svo,  cloth  circuit,  red  edges,  y.  6d.  ;  leather  limp,  51.  ;  calf 
limp  antique,  lOJ-.  6d.  Also  morocco  plain,  and  best  flexible 
morocco,  red  under  gold  edges,  12s.  6d.  {'2Sth  Edition. 

PLAIN    WORDS.     First    Series.     Revised    with    Ad- 
ditions. 

Sixty  Short  Sermons  for  the  Poor,  and  for  Family  Reading. 
Fcap.  Svo,  cloth,  turned  in,  25.  ;  cloth,  bevelled  boards,  red  edges, 
2s.  6d.  [58/^  Edition. 

PLAIN  WORDS.     Second  Series. 

Short  Sermons  for  the  Sundays  and  Chief  Holy-days  of  the  Christian 

Year. 
Fcap.  Svo,  clolh,  turned  in,  2x.  ;  cloth,  bevelled  boards,  red  edges, 

25.  6d.  iZ^th  Edition. 

PLAIN  WORDS.     Third  Series. 

Forty   Meditations  with  a  View   to  the  Deepening  of  the  Spiritual 

Life. 
Fcap.  Svo,  cloth  limp,  2s.  ;  cloth,  bevelled  boards,  red  edges,  2s.  6d. 

[24/ /i  Edition. 

PLAIN  WORDS.     Fourth  Series. 

Forty  Readings  for  those  who  Desire  to  Pray  Better. 
Fcap.    Svo,   cloth  limp,  turned  in,  2s. ;  cloth,  bevelled  boards,  red 
edges,  2s.  6d.  [12M  Edition. 


WORKS  BY  THE  RIGHT  REV.   IV.  WALSH  AM  HOW,  D.D. 

PLAIN  WORDS,  AS  TRACTS. 

Series  I. — III.  in  Large  Type.      2s.  6d.  each  Series. 
A    Selection    from    "Plain  Words"  for   Parochial  Distribution,   in 
smaller  type.     is.  per  packet,  three  kinds. 

PLAIN  WORDS  TO  CHILDREN. 

Fcap.   8vo,  cloth  limp,  turned  in,  2s.     Crown  8vo,  cloth,  bevelled 
boards,  2s.  6d.  \^th  Edition. 

POEMS. 

Complete    Edition.      Fcap.    8vo,  cloth  boards,  gilt  edges,    35.   6d. 
Without  the  Hymns,  31.     Calf  half  extra,  ^s.  6d.        {/^tk  Edition. 

PRIVATE     LIFE    AND     MINISTRATIONS     OF    THE 

PARISH  PRIEST.      A  reprint  of  an  Essay  contributed  to  "The 
Church  and  the  Age." 
Royal  32mo,  cloth,  6d. 

SCRIPTURE  READINGS.     Selected  passages  for  Reading 

to  the  Sick.     The  Appendix  to  "Pastor  in  Parochia." 
Fcap.  8vo,  clo^h  boards,  is.  6d. 

SEVEN  LENTEN  SERMONS  ON  PSALM  LI. 

Fcap.  8vo,  cloth  limp,  turned  in,  i^.  {^S^^'-  Edition. 

TWENTY-FOUR  PRACTICAL  SERMONS. 

Fcap.  8vo,  cloth  limp,  turned  in,  2s.  ;  cloth  boards,  red  edges,  2s.  6d. 

[14//1  Edition. 

"WAS  LOST,  AND  IS  FOUND."     A  Tale  of  the  London 

Mission,  1874.     With  Outline  Illustrations  by  H.  J.  A.  Miles. 

Square  i6mo,  cloth,  bevelled  boards,  gilt  edges,  \s.  6d. 

"A  really  spirited  religious  ballad,  artistically,  yet  gracefully,  illustrated." 

The  Tunes. 

WORDS  OF  GOOD  CHEER. 

Fcap.   8vo,  cloth  limp,  \s.  6d.     Small  crown  8vo,  cloth,  bevelled 
boards,  2S.  6d. 


WORKS  BY  THE   BISHOP   OF  STEPNEY 


A  PRAYER  FOR  THE  PARISH. 

On  Card,  in  red  and  black,  \d. 

A   SERVICE   FOR    THE    ADMIS- 
SION OF  A  CHORISTER. 

In  red  and  black,  -zd. 

CONFIRMATION  SERVICE. 

Directions  for  the  Clergy  and  Church- 
wardens. 
Free  on  application. 

HOLY  COMMUNION. 

For  those  who  need  Encouragement. 
(id.  per  packet  of  Twenty. 

\\Z^th  Thousand. 

HYMNS. 

Complete  Edition. 

Fcap.  8vo,  paper  cover,  dd. 

MORNING   AND  EVENING 
PRAYER  FOR  A  CHILD. 

Cloth,  xd. 


LETTER  BOOKLETS. 

Crosses. 
Desponpkncy. 

How  TO  Prepare  for  Holy  Com- 
munion. 
Repentance  and  Faith. 
The  Good  Shepherd. 
A  Fresh  Start. 
The  Bread  of  Life. 
Christ  Knocking  at  the  Door. 
Each  in    Packets,  20  for  67.     A  speci- 
men set,  y{. 

RESOLUTIONS  FOR  THOSE  RE- 
COVERING FROM  SICKNESS. 

On  card,  in  red  and  black.     12  copies 
i.i  packet,   dd. 

SUGGESTIONS  FOR  OBSERVING 
THE  DAY  OF  INTERCESSION 
FOR  FOREIGN  MISSIONS. 

Price  \d.  ;  6d.  per  100.         [io^/«  Thou. 

TWO  ADDRESSES  ON  HOLY 
MARRIAGE.     Price  \d. 

VESTRY  PRAYERS  WITH  A 
CHOIR. 

On  card,  in  red  and  black,  id. 


BV  THE 

RIGHT  REV.  A.  F.  WINNINGTON  INGRAM,  D.D., 
BISHOP   OF   STEPNEY. 


WORK  IN  GREAT   CITIES.     Si.x    Lectures   on    Pastoral 
Theology,  delivered  in  tlie  Divinity  School,  Cambridge. 
Crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3^.  6*/.  \.yd  Edition. 

"We  unhesitatingly  tell  all  youns;  workers,  lay  and  clerical,  that  whether  their 
work  lies  in  poor  districts  or  'well-to-do,'  anrongst  men  or  lads,  be  it  social  or 
didactic,  they  are  doing  themselves  and  the  work  great  injustice  so  long  as  they  remain 
unacquainted  with  Bishop  Ingram's  epigrammatic,  sensible,  experienced  talk." — 
Church  Times. 

"  Ought  to  be  in  the  hands  of  every  vicar  and  curate." — Rock. 

"Should  be  obtained  and  read  through  by  all  candidates  for  Holy  Orders." — 
Spectator. 


WORKS  BY   VARIOUS  AUTHORS 


By  the  right  REV.  A.   F.  WINNINGTON  INGRAM,  D.D.  {Contimied) 

THE  MEN  WHO  CRUCIFY  CHRIST.     A  Course  of  Lent 

Lectures. 

Crown  8vo,  art  linen  boards,  \s.  6d.  \yd  Edition. 

"Deserves  to  be  widely  read  and  carefully  pondered.  .  .  .  We  hope  that  many  lay 
people  will  read  this  little  book,  and  that  many  priests  will  develop  the  lines  of  thought 
which  it    suggests." — Church  Times. 

FRIENDS  OF  THE  MASTER.     A  Sequel  to  "  The  Men 

who  Crucify  Chiist." 

Crown  8vo,  art  linen  boards,  \s.  6d.  [^id  Edition. 

"  We  are  bound  to  speak  in  the  highest  terms  of  these  bright,  striking  addresses." — 
Church  Bells. 

MESSENGERS,  WATCHMEN,  AND  STEWARDS. 

Being  Three  Addresses  delivered  to  Clergy. 
l8mo,  cloth  boards,  is.  6d.  \2nd  Edition. 

GOOD    SHEPHERDS.     A   Companion   Volume  to   "Mes- 
sengers, Watchmen,  and  Stewards,"  being  Addresses  delivered  to 
tliose  preparing  for  Holy  Orders,  at  the  Clergy  School,  Leeds, 
June  1896. 
i8nio,  cloth  boards,  \s.  6d. 


^be  Xlbrarg  ot  ipractical  Cbvistianit^. 

Edited  by  the  Rev.  J.  H.  BURN,  B.D.,  Examining  Chaplain  to  the 
Bishop  of  Aberdeen. 

1.  THE  LAW  OF  FAITH.     By  the  Rev.  William  Bright, 

D.D.,    Canon  of  Christ  Church,    Oxford,    Regius    Professor   of 

Ecclesiastical  History. 

Crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  6s. 

"A  very  valuable  theological  work.  .  .  .  Every  page  is  the  outcome  of  a  richly 
stored  mind,  and  a  reader  will  find  that  any  single  theme  is  so  treated  as  to  suggest 
many  fruitful  topics  for  studious  thought.  It  is  not  at  all  a  book  to  be  read  hurriedly  ; 
it  deserves,  and  will  more  than  repay,  steady  attention.  .  .  •  Dr.  Bright's  style  also 
may  be  specially  commended  to  young  men  who  desire  to  learn  how  to  measure  their 
words.  He  is  not  only  theologically  exact,  but  he  is  also  signally  successful  in 
attaining  to  that  literary  charm  of  selecting  the  very  word  which  expresses  the  writer's 
thought." — Guardian. 

2.  TESTIMONIES  TO  CHRIST.     By  the  Rev.  C.  J.  Ball, 

M.A.,  Chaplain  of  Lincoln's  Inn. 
Crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  6s. 


WORKS  BY  VARIOUS  AUTHORS 


BY  THE   REV.    R.   E.  SANDERSON,   D.D., 

CANON    RESIDENTIARY  OF  CHICHESTER  ;   VICAR   OF 
HOLY   TRINITY   CHURCH,    HASTINGS. 

WHAT  IS  THE  CHURCH?     THE  ANSWER  OF  THE 

NEW  TESTAMENT.     A  Course  of  Eight  Sermons. 
Fcap.  8vo,  cloth,  2s.  6d.  {2nd  Edition. 

THE    LIFE     OF     THE     WAITING     SOUL     IN     THE 

INTERMEDIATE  STATE.     Addresses  delivered  at  Holy  Trinity, 
Hastings. 
Fcap.  8vo,  cloth,  2s.  6d.  [4//1  Edition, 


Vols.  IX.  and  X.  of 

^be  IRational  Cburcbee. 

Edited  by  the  Rev.   P.   H.  DITCHFIELD,  M.A. 
THE  CHURCH  IN  ENGLAND.     By  Canon  Overton. 

With  Maps.      Two  Vols.,  crown  8vo,  ds. 

"  His  work  is  sound,  trustworthy,  impartial,  and  up  to  date." — Guardian. 

"  We  feel  nothing  but  sincere  gratitude  for  the  solidity  and  veracity  of  his  work." — 
Church  Titnes. 

"  Immense  amount  of  information,  and  thoroughly  interesting." — Record. 

"  We  wish  everj'  teacher  in  our  Church  Schools  could  possess  the  book." — School 
Guardian. 

"Church  histories  in  these  days  are  plentiful — some  would  say,  too  plentiful — but 
Canon  Overton,  in  his  Church  in  Engta/ui,  approaclies  the  subject  from  a  point  of 
view  somewhat  different  from  that  taken  in  many  current  histories.  .  .  .  We  have 
nowhere  met  a  clearer  or  more  interesting  picture  of  the  characteristic  features  of  the 
Early  English  Church,  of  its  distinctly  national  character,  etc." — Tiines. 


THE    CREED    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN.     By    tlie    Rev. 
Charles  Gore,  M.A.,  D.D.,  Canon  of  Westminster. 
Crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  is.  6d.  [/^th  Edition. 

BV  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 

PRAYER,  AND  THE  LORD'S  PRAYER. 

Crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  is.  6d. 


AD  LUCEM ;   or,  THE  ASCENT   OF   MAN   THROUGH 
CHRIST.     By    the    Rev.    Algernon    Barrington   Simeon, 
M.A.,  Christ  Church,  Oxford;  Rector  of  Bigbury,  Devon. 
Crown  8vo,  6s. 

London:  WELLS  GARDNER,  DARTON  &  CO., 
3  Paternoster  Buildings,  E.C. 


A  Selection  of 

fVells  Gardner^  Darton  £^  Co^  s 

POPULAR  BOOKS. 

Mr.   Qordon   Browne's   Fairy  Tales  from 
Grimm. 

With  Introduction  by  S.   BARI  NGGOULD,  M.A. 

A  High-Class  Gift-Book,  with  upwards  of  One  Hundred  and  Fifty 
Illustrations  from  Drawings  by  Mr.  Gordon  Browne,  produced  in 
the  Best  Style,  and  Printed  on  Superfine  Paper. 

Large  8vo,  in  appropriate  fancy  cloth  boards,  gilt  top,  6s. 

\Second  Edition. 

"  Altogether  delightful.  The  illustrations  are  full  of  charm  and  sympathy. 
Mr.  Gordon  Browne  is  particularly  successful  in  the  grotesque  and  fantastic 
elements  of  the  stories." — Saturday  Review. 

"  Simply  inimitable." — Queen. 

"A  choice  volume  of  attractive  form,  with  charming  illustrations  abounding 
In  humour  .  .  .  worthy  to  rank  as  one  of  the  leading  editions  of  our  familiar 
fairy  tales.'  — Church  Times. 

"  The  prettiest  of  all  fairy  books  this  year.  .  .  .  This  is  a  fairy  book  beyond 
reproach." — Daily  Graphic. 

"  No  more  acceptable  edition  of  some  of  Grimm's  Stories  has  been  pub- 
lished."— Standard. 

"  Of  new  editions  of  these  old  favourites  the  palm  must  be  given,  we  think, 
to  that  collection  >Df  *  Fairy  Tales  from  Grimm,'  to  which  Mr.  Baring-Gould 
stands  sponsor.  .  .  .  Even  with  the  memory  of  that  edition  of  Grimm,  which 
Mr.  Crane  illustrated  years  ago,  we  do  not  think  that  a  better  edition  than 
this  has  appeared." — Review  of  Reviews. 

"  Charming." —  World. 

"  We  have  nothing  but  praise  for  this  collection  .  .  .  The  youngster  who  is 
not  satisfied  with  his  gift  must  be  hard  to  please." — Sketch. 

3  Paternoster  Buildings,  London;  44  Victoria  Street,  Wdstminstfr 


Wells  Gardner,  Darton  &  Co.' 8  Popular  Books. 

MR.  GORDON  BROWNE'S  NEW  ILLUSTRATED  VOLUME. 
Uniform  in  style  with  the  popular  edition  of  *'  GrimnCs  Fairy  Tales,** 

National  Rhymes  of  the  Nursery. 

With  Introduction  by  GEORGE  SAINTSBURY. 

Pictures  by  GORDON    BROWNE. 

Large  crown  8vo,  fancy  cloth  boards,  gilt  top,  6s. 

Printed  on  Superfine  Paper,  in  a  type  specially  purchased  for  this 
work,  with  Title  in  Red  and  Black. 

This  volume  will  be  found  to  contain  all  the  popular  favourites,  and 
is  likely  to  prove  a  most  acceptable  gift  to  any  family  circle.  The 
illustrations  are  excellent  in  every  way,  and  are  very  numerous. 

A  New  Book  by  Mr.  Crockett,  beautifully  Illustrated  and  Printed  on 
Superfine  Paper. 

Sweetheart  Travellers. 

A  Child's  Book  for  Children,  for  Women,  and  for  Men. 

By  S.   R.  CROCKETT,  Author  of  "The  Stickit  Minister,"  "The 
Lilac  Sunbonnet,"  "The  Raiders,"  &c. 

With  numerous  Illustrations  by  Gordon  Browne  and  W.  II.  C. 
Groome. 

Fancy  cloth  boards,  large  crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  6s. 
An  Edition  on  Large  Paper,  each  copy  numbered,  and   signed   by 
Author  and  Artists,  £1.  lls.  6d.  net. 

My  Lost  Manuscript,    the  romance  of  a  school. 

By  M  AGG I  E  SYM I NGTON,  Author  of  "  Working  to  Win,"  "  Two 

Silver  Keys,"  "  In  the  World's  Garden,"  "Trixy,"  &c.  &c. 
With  Etched  Title  and  Frontispiece. 
Large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  6s, 

The  Child  and  His  Book. 

Some  Account  of  the  History  and  Progress  of  Children's  Literature 

in  England. 
By  Mrs.  E.  M.  FIELD,  Author  of  "  Ethne,"  "Mixed  Pickles,"  &c. 
Illustrated,  large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  6s.  [Second  Edition. 

"  It  is  a  series  of  studies,  well  worth  careful  reading,  of  a  subject  of  the 
greatest  importance  and  interest ;  and  the  studies  are  made  more  valuable  by 
being  the  work  of  a  very  thoughtful  and  accomplished  writer.'  — Spectator. 

3  Paternoster  BuildingSj  London;  44  Victoria  Street,  Westminster. 


Wells  Gardner,  Darton  &  Co.'s  Populai  Books. 


The  Story-telling  Album. 

For  Our  Boys  and  Girls. 
With  an  Illustration  on  every  page. 
Crown  4to,  cloth  boards,  gilt  edges,  5s. 

A  very  elegant  book  for  children  from  Jive  to  eight. 

Chatterbox. 

Annual  Volume.     Illustrated  with  high-class  Engravings. 
Handsomely  bound  in  extra  cloth,  bevelled  boards,  gilt  edges,  6s. 
Also  in  illustrated  boards,  3s. 

"  No  nursery  would  be  complete  without  a  '  Chatterbox.'  "—Punch. 

"  One  of  the  best  children's  books  we  have  seen."— Times. 

"  Publishers  in  describing  their  own  books  are  not  unfrequently  apt  to  say 
of  them  a  little  more  than  they  deserve,  but  the  publishers  of  *  Chatterbox '  are 
not  guilty  of  any  exaggeration  in  describing  it  as  '  the  most  popular  volume  for 
children  ever  published.'  Both  pictures  and  letterpress  are  very  good."— School 
Guardian. 

Sunday.       reading  for  the  young. 

The  Annual  Volumes.  With  upwards  of  250  Original  Illustrations 
by  Gordon  Browne,  A.  Forestier,  Helen  Miles,  T.  Pym, 
and  others. 

Bound  in  cloth,  bevelled  boards,  gilt  edges,  6s.  each. 
Also  in  Illustrated  Board,  3s.  each. 

"  Delightfully  artistic.  The  young  will  be  hard  to  please  if  they  do  not  like 
the  letterpress." — Times. 

"  In  these  days  children  require  what  is  cheerful  and  agreeable,  as  well  as 
serious,  in  order  that  Sunday  may  not  be  puritanically  grave  and  solemn. 
Such  is  the  provision  made  for  them  here,  and  both  they  and  their  parents 
may  feel  much  indebted  to  Messrs.  Wells  Gardner,  Darton  &  Co.  for  this 
excellent  publication."— ^^/^f^/z. 


3  Paternoster  Buildings,  London;  44  Victoria  Street,  Westminster. 


Wells  Gardner,  Darton  &  Co.'s  Popular  Books. 


Nigel  Bartram's  Ideal. 

By  FLORENCE  WILFORD,  Author  of  *  A  Maiden  of  Our  Own 

Day,"  &c. 
Crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 
"Admirably  worked  out ;  indeed,  we  do  not  remember  that  a  similar  situa- 
tion has  ever  been  more  thoughtfully  and  sympathetically  handled.  Mrs. 
Bartram's  character  is  delineated  in  all  its  true  nobility  with  really  exquisite 
insight.  .  .  .  'Nigel  Bartram's  Ideal' is  a  fine  study  of  character,  and  deserves 
to  be  read." — Spectator. 

A  Feast  of  Stories  from  Foreign  Lands. 

By  JAMES  F.  COBB- 

Illustrated.     Crown  8vo,  extra  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

The  Lost  Princess;  or,  The  Wise  Woman. 

By  GEORGE  MACDONALD,  Author  of  *' Phantastes,"  "At  the 

Back  of  the  North  Wind,"  "Robert  Falconer,"  &c. 
With  numerous  Illustrations  by  A.  G.  Walker,  Sculptor. 
Crown  8vo,  fancy  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

The  Watchers  on  the  Longships. 

A  Tale  of  Cornwall  in  the  Last  Century. 
By  JAMES  F.  COBB. 

Illustrated  with  Four  full-page  Engravings  by  Davidson  Knowles. 

Large  crown  8vo,  cloth,  bevelled  boards,  3s.  6d.         \\^th  Edition. 

"A  capital  story,  and  one  we  heartily  commend  to  boy  readers,  both  gentle 
lUd  simple." — Guardian. 

Off  to  California,     a  tale  of  the  gold  country. 

Adapted  from  the  Flemish  of  Hendrik  Conscii;nce. 
By  JAMES  F.  COBB. 

Illustrated  with  Six  full-page  Plates  by  A.  Forestier. 
Large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

"The  scene  of  this  story  is  laid  in  exciting  times.  The  adventurers  go 
through  the  greatest  perils ;  and  they  find  a  wonderful  treasure  in  a  pool  of 
a  mountain.  .  .  .  This  is  a  good  story  of  its  kind,  told  with  spirit,  and  admir- 
able in  tone  and  moral." — Spectator. 

"  This  is  a  capital  story  for  boys,  full  of  adventure  and  stirring  incident,  but 
of  excellent  tone  and  good  moral  tendency.  '1  here  are  half-a-dozen  spirited 
Illustrations,  and  the  book  is  attractively  bound." — Nonconformist. 

3  Paternoster  Buildings,  London;  44  Victoria  Street,  Westminster. 

1 


Wells  Gardner,  Darton  &  Go.'s  Popular  Books. 


Bridewell     Royal     Hospital,     Past     and 
Present. 

A  short  account  of  it  as  Palace,  Hospital,  Prison,  and  School,  with  a 

collection  of  Interesting  Memoranda  never  before  published. 
By  ALFRED  JAMES  COPELAND,  F.S.A. 
Crown  8vo,  3s.  6d. 

"Mr.  Copeland  has  told  the  unvarnished  tale  of  his  Hospital  from  the  un- 
impeachable records  of  contemporary  documents," — Saturday  Review. 

Honor    Bright ;    or,    The    Four  =  Leaved 
Shamrock. 

By  the  Author  of  "  One  of  a  Covey,"  "  Robin  and  Linnet,"  &c. 
Illustrated.     Large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d.     [6//?  Edition. 

"It  is  tastefully  bound,  with  illustrations,  and  will  be  sure  of  a  hearty 
reception  by  all.  The  style  is  quaint  and  bright,  while  the  story  is  sensible  and 
amusing.  We  congratulate  the  authors  upon  their  happy  choice  of  title." 
— Public  Opinion. 

"A  cheery,  sensible,  and  healthy  tale." — Times. 

A  Lost  Piece  of  Silver. 

By  the  Author  of  '*  Edith  Vernon's  Life-Work,"  &c.     Illustrated. 
Large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards  extra,  3s.  6d.. 

"  Told  without  exaggeration,  without  any  fine  writing,  but  with  considerable 
power. " — Spectator. 

Martin  the  Skipper. 

A  Tale  for  Boys  and  Seafaring  Folk. 
By  JAMES  F.  COBB. 
Full-page  Illustrations.     Large  crown  Svo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

"  We  should  imagine  those  queer  folk  indeed  who  could  not  read  this  story 
with  eager  interest  and  pleasure,  be  they  boys  or  girls,  young  or  old.  We 
highly  commend  the  style  in  which  the  book  is  written,- and  the  religious  spirit 
which  pervades  it." — Christian  World. 

Dogged  Jack. 

By  FRANCES  PALMER. 
Illustrated.     Large  crown  Svo,  cloth,  3s.  6d. 
"  It  is  a  first-rate  boys'  book.     It  is  confidently  recommended  as  a  present 
or  prize." — Church  Bells. 

"A  capital  story:  the  characters  are  well  drawn,  and  the  incidents  are 
perfectly  natural." — Church  Times. 


3  Paternoster  Buildings,  London;  44  Victoria  Street,  Westminster. 


Wells  Gardner,  Darton  &  Oo.'s  Popular  Boohs. 
Count   up   the   Sunny    Days,    and    Four 

Little   Sixes.       a  book  for  Boys  and  girls. 
By  C.  A.  JONES.     With  full-page  Illustrations. 
Large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

"An  unusually  good  children's  story." — Glasgow  Herald. 

Eight  Years  in  Kaffraria. 

With  Illustrations  and  Map  of  the  Diocese  of  Kaffraria. 
By  the  Ven.  Archdeacon  GIBSON. 
Crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

"One  of  the  most  complete  and  minute  records  of  the  kind  we  have  read 
for  many  a  year." — Saturday  Review, 

Merrie  Games  in  Rhyme,  from  ye  Olden 
Time. 

Collected  and  Edited  by  the  Hon.  EMM  ELI  NE  PLUNKET. 
Printed  in  red  and  black.     Crown  4to,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

Each  Rhyme  is  accompanied  by  a  rubric  indicating  how  the  game 
is  played,  and  a  musical  score  of  the  traditional  tune  to  which  it  is 
chanted. 

Topsy  Turvy. 

ByS.  M.  CRAWLEY  BOEVEY. 

With  upwards  of  Thirty  Illustrations  by  H.  J.  A.  MiLES. 

4to,  extra  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

"  The  illustrations  add  largely  to  the  interest  of  this  amusing  volume.  Jack 
falls  asleep,  and  is  very  much  surprised  presently  to  find  himself  an  inhabitant 
of  Water-world,  where  he  goes  through  wonderful  and  edifying  adventures." — 
Literary  World. 

Two  Blackbirds. 

By  the  Author  of  "  Honor  Bright." 
Illustrated.     Large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 
^      The  Proprietors  of  "  Chatterbox  "  offered  three  prizes,  and  out  of 
several  hundred  manuscripts,  "Two  Blackbirds"  was  awarded  the 
first  prize.  ,^ 

3  Paternoster  Buildings,  London;  44  Victoria  Street,  Westminster. 


Wells  Gardner,  Darton  &  Co.'s  Popular  Boohs. 
Out  of  the  Way.     a  village  story. 

By  H.  L.  TAYLOR. 

With  Tvrenty-four  Original  Illustrations  by  A.  H.  COLLINS. 

Large  crown  8vo,  extra  cloth  boards,  gilt  edges,  3s.  6d. 

"  Really  an  interesting  story.  .  .  .  Excellently  carried  out.  .  .  .  We  were 
half-way  through  the  book  before  we  found  out  that  it  was  a  temperance  tale 
at  all." — Guardian. 

"The  book  deserves  warm  praise;  we  wish  there  were  more  temperance 
tales  like  it." — Christian  World. 

The  Old  Ship ;  or,  Better  than  Strength. 

By  H.  A.   FORDE.     Illustrated  Title  and  Frontispiece. 
Large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 
•'A  very  pleasing  narrative." — Record. 

The  Queen  of  the  Goblins. 

ByWILHELMINA  PICKERING,  Author  of  " The  Adventures  of 

Prince  Almero,"  «S:c. 
Profusely  Illustrated  by  Olive  Cockerell. 
4to,  fancy  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

"  In  the  stress  and  struggle  of  prosaic  existence,  children,  even  those  of  a 
larger  growth,  may  turn  with  satisfaction  to  '  The  Queen  of  the  Goblins.'  .  .  . 
There  are  no  half-measures  in  this  book,  which  takes  us  away  into  Goblindom 
and  Witchland,  and  rejuvenates  us." — Daily  Telegraph, 

One  of  a  Covey. 

By  the  Author  of  "  Honor  Bright." 

With  Thirty  Original  Illustrations  by  H.  J.  A.  Miles. 

"Full  of  spirit  and  life,  so  well  sustained  throughout  that  grown-up  readers 
may  enjoy  it  as  much  as  children.  It  is  one  of  the  best  books  of  the  season." 
— Guardian. 

Only  a  Girl,     a  story  of  a  quiet  life. 

A  Tale  of  Brittany. 
Adapted   from   the   French   by  C.   A.   JONES.     With  upwards  of 
Forty  Illustrations.     Large  crown  8vo,  cloth  boards,  3s.  6d. 

"  We  can  thoroughly  recommend  this  brightly  wTitten  and  homely  narrative." 
— Saturday  Review. 

3  Paternoster  Buildings,  London;  44  Victoria  Street,  Westminster. 


Date  Due 

p 

.—«'   ""* 

?• 

^,-i- 

p 

—    "■""" 

» 

^^    "-^ 

■*^ 

^ 

'  ■   '-'*.  Si 


/:i: 


^.'>j 


